Back in February this year I wrote a post about my goals for the 2014 Goodreads Reading Challenge. As part of that post I speculated that, despite 2013 showing a great uptick in how much I was reading, 2014 might not maintain the pace.

Well, the year is almost finished and I think it’s fair to say that I pretty solidly surpassed my goal. The initial reading target was 20 books. This was admittedly a number I thought I shouldn’t have any trouble reading. I just wasn’t sure if I would end up reading at the same pace this year and it seemed like a sensible target. So I made it to 20 some months back, and decided to raise the target to 22. At the time I wasn’t reading as fast as I had been at the start of the year, so a small increase felt reasonable. I hit that target as well before too long.

As I write this there are less than ten days left in 2014. I’ve “finished” 29 books so far this year, and there is a good chance I’ll finish another before the year is done. I put quotes around the word finished because one of those book I’d read part of in 2013. It still counts as far as I’m concerned. Including that book this year is fine because next year I’ll no doubt include one or more that I read part of this year. It all works out in the end. I think I’ve read more words this year than last year but I’m not sure it would be by a whole lot, as a few of this years books were on the small side.

Has the Kindle still got it?

Absolutely. I read a few physical books this year because they were manga that I couldn’t get digitally, but everything else was digital, and on the Kindle. I even spent $17 of my own money to read a book for work that I could have read for free if I’d been willing to read the hard cover book work was offering. I just don’t want to read physical books anymore. I’m currently using a first generation Kindle Paperwhite but I’m looking forward to getting my hands on the new Kindle Voyage when it becomes available in Australia. It will be pricey and unnecessary, but it think it will make for a slightly nicer experience and iron out couple of small issue I have with the Paperwhite.

Reading on the Kindle is still enjoyable and “cool”. I’m not sure I’ll ever entirely lose the feeling I get when I stop and think about having a digital book reader and all that it brings with it. That is probably the result of growing up and doing a lot of reading prior to such a thing existing. I image that most kids growing up with these devices won’t tend to see them in quite the same way. Like smart phones and tablets, it will just be the way things have always been.

Next Years Target?

At this point I feel similarly about next year as I did about this year, so I’m planning to set my target at 20 books again. I don’t look at the challenge as a way to stretched myself, but rather as a way to look back at the year and be happy with how much I read. If I can read another 20 books this year then I won’t be disappointed.

Back in early 2012 I wrote a post about how I had noticed that I was reading more books since I had bought my iPad. Now a bit more than a year later I thought it might be worth revisiting that and think about what has changed.

Am I Still Using My iPad?

Absolutely. After my work laptop (where I obviously spend many hours a week working) it’s the device that I spend the most time using. All the time I used to spend on my computer reading articles has been translated to the iPad. I’d say I spend at least a couple hours a day using my iPad, often more, especially on weekends. So I’m still reading a lot of web content these days (though probably a little less than when I wrote the previous post) and I’m still doing it on my iPad. It really is an excellent device for that kind of activity.

Am I Still Reading Books on My iPad?

No, but it’s not because I stopped reading ebooks. I decided to get myself a Kindle as I’d been interested in trying one out for some time, and, just as many people before me, I have found it to be an excellent device for reading ebooks. I was happy enough reading books on my iPad but the Kindle is just much more convenient, because:

• It’s small enough to hold comfortably in one hand
• The battery life is much longer than that of a tablet so you don’t need to think about charging it much. I can go about a month between charging and thinking about doing it again, which is great.
• I used the Kindle reader app on my iPad but it didn’t have the store aspect build into it. The Kindle does, which makes it that little bit more convenient when I want to download another book.
• Being a standalone device I can sit down and read without feeling the itch to switch to another app and do something. That wasn’t ever really a big problem for me but there are so many thing besides reading a book that I could be doing, so it’s nice to have a reading environment with just a little bit less temptation to do something else.

Reading In General

My book reading goal for 2012 was eight books, which isn’t a lot but it was more than I had been getting through in previous years. I ended up going well over on that goal. I started reading 21 novels or short stories and completed 17, of which two were short stories. I may never get around to finishing some of the books I started and didn’t finish because they just didn’t hold my attention.

In the last post I thought that the two main reasons why I was reading more with my iPad around were because it was convient and because I thought it was cool. I they both still hold up, though the coolness has now shifted to my Kindle since that is where all my book reading happens. Convenience is always an important factor, but idea that something is just plain neat is always a good motivator and I’m still finding that to be the case even after having a Kindle for over a year now.

The advantages and disadvantages that I mentioned in may last post still stand, and nothing has really changed there. Amazon does have some kind of lending facility in place now for customers who have a Prime membership, but as far as I know that isn’t available in Australia. Even if it was I’m not sure I’d get it. For the $70+ dollars a year it would likely cost I could buy a half dozen books and I don’t go through them all that quickly. For those in the US who have Prime for quicker deliveries I guess it’s just a bonus that they can borrow books as well, but I don’t think I’d bother with it simply so that I could borrow in the first place, not unless I was reading a lot more books than I am.

The Future (again)

I see myself continuing to read at about the same pace I am currently, which means I’ll probably still be able to knock off around a dozen books a year. That’s hardly a voracious pace of reading, but it’s a pace that I’ll be happy to be able to achieve. It’s quick enough that I should feel like I’m getting something done and quick enough that I should be able to get to most of the books I think I’d like to read in a somewhat timely fashion.

A while back I realised that, for me, a computer is primarily just a conduit to the Internet. Almost everything I do on a computer requires that I have, or at some point had, a connection to the Internet in order to get content. The interesting thing that comes from this realisation, is that any sufficiently capable device with an Internet connection should allow me to do most of my daily computing. I’m no longer restricted to needing a proper laptop or desktop computer. It’s possible for me to get away with having a less capable device.

I’ve had thoughts along these lines previously, but I think that it’s only recently that the technology and services that help to make them useful have started to become good enough, and sufficiently ubiquitous, to make it something that average people can do without much trouble.

With the advances in mobile phone technology, and the recent availability of (good, usable, people can see themselves using it) tablet computing, it’s actually not hard to find devices that can make a decent go of replacing a desktop or laptop computer for a lot of what many do with a computer during a typical day, myself included. While I think that currently this is still more true of recreational activities than typical work related activities, it’s a good indicator of just how much phones and tablet style devices have advanced in the last few years. And, you can call me an fan boy if you want, but, I think it’s fair to say that Apple has had much to do with pushing these advances along with some of the products they have introduced.

And it’s this shift to more capable, mobile devices that is bringing mobile computing and the Internet to more and more people who are not technically inclined and who might not otherwise touch anything that they might think of as “computer”. The flexibility that these mobile devices bring is not just beneficial to those with the knowledge and skills to fully exploit them, but also hugely beneficial and liberating for the average non-technical person as well.

It’s Not Just Me

This piece of writing has been sitting idle on the back burner for a long time since it first started off as an idea I had, but I’ve finally pulled it out again and dusted it off after reading a post by Ben Brooks over at The Brooks Review. It’s a discussion of the benefits of having a 3G wireless connection in a laptop, and in it he says…

“but truth be told she just means that for her any computing tool is useless if it doesn’t have an Internet connection”

I think that this matches up quite well with the way that I, and many others, think about devices these days. While they may be useful when not connected, it’s when they are connected that they can really shine.

And It’s Not Just The Internet

Given the above you might think that a computer without an Internet connection would be of much less value to me. That’s true to a certain extent, but an unconnected computer is still fairly important to me at this point in time. Pretty much all the ways I choose to entertain myself involve using the computer or content that was acquired via a computer (in the case of the Internet). And even in the case of content that wasn’t acquired via a computer, the odds are good that I’ll want to use a computer to do something with that content. An obvious example is ripping music from a CD or DVD that I bought. When it comes to my movies my preferred viewing method is via my media centre, so a computer still needs to be involved both to rip the DVD and to then watch the contents of the DVD.

Conclusion

So what does all of the above mean? Put fairly simply, it means that my life is currently a very computer centric one. If you drill into that a little it’s also a very Internet centric one, as that is where I find so much of the content (articles, video clips, comics, you name it) that occupy much of my free time. If you wanted to drill down yet again, you would find that the single device that I spend much of my time with is, now, my iPad, but I wont be discussing that particular device here. There have already been a great many words written of the transformative possibilities that the iPad can, and has, brought to many workflows and industries, and I don’t think I would be adding anything that hasn’t already being well said by many others before me.