2020 Middle of the Year Reading Update

Today I was thinking about how unmotivated I am to read books that I would normally greatly enjoy.  I abruptly abandoned what I was reading partway through the book and started something different.  I then realized that it's time for my middle of the year reading update!

I am not myself at all.  I'm too worried about school starting and about everything having to do with the pandemic.  I go back to work five weeks from today.  School starts six weeks from tomorrow.  Yikes.  I feel like I'm trapped on the Titanic headed for a disaster.

I have decided that my listings on eBay and Etsy will come down regardless of how we do school.  I just don't need to be packing books or answering buyer's questions in the evenings.  I expect that both of my stores will be closed from around August 3 through at least late August.  I will have to see what happens and assess my stress level.

I keep pushing my fears into the back of my mind, but August 5 creeps closer with each day.  And of course, everyone is deeply worried about school, not just the teachers but also the parents and children.  This is a such a mess. 

With all that is on my mind, I don't get much out of reading anything.

In "Books Read in 2019 and My Reduced Interest in Reading," I listed what I read in the years up to and including 2019.

My previous yearly totals for books read are as follows.

2014:  262 books
2015:  231 books
2016:  355 books
2017:  403 books
2018:  315 books

I ended up reading 185 books in 2019, which is pretty incredible considering how distracted I was.  This total is on par with what I believe I read per year leading up to 2014.  I did not keep track of my totals for those years, but I tended to read around 130 to 180 books per year in the years immediately preceding 2014. 

My precipitous fall in the number of books read continues.  I read just 54 books during the first half of 2020.  If my pace does not change, then I can expect to read just 108 books by the end of the year.  I can see a situation where my pace could increase, and I can also see where it might decrease further.

I have quit reading four different series so far this year.  I just lost interest and quit.  I tried reading some of Mildred Wirt's girls' books and quit after one volume.  I tried to continue Sweet Dreams, but I quit again.  I started reading Rick Brant, which is one of my favorite series, and then I lost interest after reading #6.  Most recently, I started reading Beverly Gray again.  Beverly Gray is my second favorite series after Nancy Drew.  My reading was going really great, but then I lost interest during Beverly Gray's Romance.  I quit reading Beverly Gray's Quest today. 

I remember when people expressed such disbelief when I was reading above 200 books per year.  That was what I wanted to do at that time.  There was nothing incredible about it.  I never understood why such a big deal was made about it.  These days, I would rather read about the pandemic online.  So of course my book reading has greatly reduced. 

I have been purchasing the Wishing Star and Windswept books during the last few weeks.  Those two series are young adult books that were published by Scholastic during the 1980s.  I now have most of them on hand.  I still lack around seven of them from both series combined.  That doesn't matter, since all of the books are stand-alone stories. 

I am going to try reading Wishing Star now.  I am in the mood for that kind of story, so this might go well.  I hope so, anyway.