Today is the last Monday of my teaching career. I retire on Thursday of this week. I am looking forward to all the new reading time I will have. I have been a teacher for 32 years, and I am ready to begin the next adventure. While I am not young, I still feel like I have some good time left (I am 58). I am going to start a Substack on books, board games, movies, and anything that catches my interest. I will also be writing a novel. I spent the last two weekends setting up my home office (it looks great!). To say that I am excited would be an understatement (although I am not sure if I will really notice until the first day of school next year. My wife has one more year to go, and seeing her leave for the classroom in the morning will be weird.)

I would love to hear what June celebrations you are looking forward to. I don't care how big or small it might be. I just want to have a chance to share in your joy, too!

Hey friends!

I haven't been reading as much lately, mainly because I'm nervous about a big scary stressful, but exciting thing coming up soon.

I was thinking, whenever I feel really overwhelmed, or stressed, I don't read. In fact, I want to but I seem to actively avoid it whenever I get a second, favouring TV and video games. I love reading so much, it's like I don't want to tarnish it with the feeling of stress or feel like I'm supposed to be disconnecting but can't quite get there.

I was wondering, what's your relationship between reading and stress? Do you have rituals? Does it help you? Do you avoid it?

So a few days ago I think there was a discussion here about people skipping prologues/epilogues and stuff like that In a similar vein, i've seen videos/comments of people say that they only read dialogue, or they skip big paragraphs... or use AI to "read" (aka summarize an entire book in a paragraph) Now my question is.. is this real? Or is it rage bait?

Personally I can understand people skipping prologues/epilogues. I think there might be a confusion between prologues/forewords/introductions, so fair enough, I get it. (Enough about this bc it is not the focus of this post and has already been discussed 😂)

But... only reading dialogue? That can't be real right? Does anyone actually know someone who does this stuff? I'm feeling like it must be something for engagement, right?? To get people to interact..??

I'm excited I won this ebook through pagebound's giveaways. I also briefly skimmed the author's note and I want to commend the author for including a full list in the back of the book of content warnings. I also noticed how the author approved a list of content warnings on other reading platforms. So I'm excited to read this and I can't wait for more giveaways in the future hopefully introducing me to newer worlds and authors. Thank you again!

I have noticed many questions in the forums about page and book goals. Today, I even saw a question about the possibility of Pagebound interfering with said goals (question was by Candle_thrill).

I got me thinking about what Pagebound has done to my reading. I am smashing my goal this year. This is not insignificant. My goal is huge compared to most people. I think the last time I checked, I was something like 33 books ahead of my goals pace. For someone who reads as much as I do already, it is a little astounding.

I have attributed this to a Pagebound Bump. Since I joined Pagebound my reading has skyrocketed. The mere act of writing about reading. Talking about reading. Has led to more reading. It has kept my brain super engaged and active when it comes to books. For the first time in years, I have actually been keeping on top of my ARCs because I want to get the review published and have comments in the forum. I hated Goodreads and almost never posted written reviews. Now I am using Pagebound's Plan page to ensure my ARCs are read on time.

Pagebound, in general, has led to a significant increase in my reading. It made me wonder if there was anyone else out there like me? I would be interested to hear from you whether Pagebound has led to more reading on your part. Has it impacted your enjoyment of reading? This is one area in which I can give Pagebound no credit. I have always loved reading. I will say that I have read a few books I would never have read without Pagebound, though.

Since I have been keeping data on my reading habits since 2001, I can actually see the numbers and know this year has been insane. How about you?