For the past few years now I've aimed to read about a book a week. Last year I only managed about a book a month, and the year before I don't think I actually kept a record.

This year has been pretty slow too. Technically I'm on my 14th or so book, and I don't think anyone needs to do the math to realize that we are not in the 14th week of the year. I've been reading consistently, but the books I have been picking up were not easily digestible. Typically it would take me a month or more to finish one, and then I would sit down with something short and finish that in a single sitting.

This time I spent about a month or so slogging through London, which was not nearly as good as what I've been reading lately, and the next item on my plate was a quick novel by Asimov that I finished in a few hours.

What I have been consistent with is writing reviews for each of the books I finished. I think so far Les Mis has been the only exception, and I have exempted it because I am still writing the review in my head. It's such a good book that I want to do it justice. All my reviews are linked to my account on library thing, and one I add one the widget on the sidebar is updated. The last few have been lazy, but I'm trying to up the quality into something that people might actually consider reading. I figure if that's almost all the writing I do, I should put more work into doing it well.

I myself don't usually read reviews of anything unless I have already read it or am in the middle of reading it. I use them not so much as a guide to what I should read next (because I have a list that stretches 100 books long to do that for me) but as a way to check my own impressions and understanding against some outside experience. And, I do get some bit of egotistical pleasure from reading reviews by people who really didn't get it too.

Next on the plate is Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan. Lately I've been trying to brush up on my academics, listing Kanji compounds, practicing reading, etc... so it's good timing to read a book with a focus on Japan. Maybe I'll keep up with the good habit of updating this damn thing and put some notes down as I go through. I do this on paper as well, but true to my disorganized nature I keep forgetting which notebook I'm using for the purpose, and so my comments on books are spread out on random pages of random notebooks and are almost impossible to reference properly.