Reader Questionnaire*:･ﾟ✧
Do you mostly read fiction or non-fiction? While I do read both, the bulk of my reading tends to be fiction. I want to read more nonfiction, but picking it up is still very much a conscious decision on my part.
Is reading for pleasure part of your daily routine? If so, how much time a day do you spend on reading? Yes, I make it a point to read for pleasure every day. Sometimes (weekends, holidays) it might be as little as five minutes, but usually I'll get an hour or two of reading in.
Do you often binge books? Define binge. ^_^; I have been known to spend hours reading, and to stay up far later than I should when I am engrossed in a story. But I can and do put down my book to do other things, though I do try to get to the end of a chapter first.
Describe your average reading session 😁(Do you have a special spot where you get comfortable/is it a hard copy or an e-book/is it day or night etc.) I read a mix of physical books and ebooks (and I listen to audiobooks too). On weekdays I will read during lunch, and I regularly listen to an audiobook on my commute from work. I'll usually read before bed as well, so time of day is less of a driver. I also don't have a particular special spot where I go to read, but I do like to curl up on the couch or in a comfortable chair when I'm reading a physical book or an ebook.
Do you have a schedule or do you read when you feel like reading? It's really a bit of both. I have chunks of time that I typically devote to reading (and/or listening to audiobooks), like during my lunch break at work or my commute, so you could call that a reading schedule. But I also will pick up a book at other times, just whenever I feel like it. It just...happens to be a daily thing.
Have you ever struggled with reading (e.g. issues with concentration/retaining information, learning disabilities etc.) and how did you manage to overcome it? I cannot recall any particular struggles with reading. I have found that some classics are easier to comprehend if I listen to them while reading a physical or ebook copy.
Can you read multiple books at once? Yes. Last year I did make a rule for myself that I can't have more than ten active reads at once, and I have been keeping to that. Things were getting a bit out of hand before then. ^_^;
If you're multilingual, do you intentionally choose to regularly read books in your target language(s) to maintain language proficiency? Is it a habit too, or is it a matter of the book's original language? The only language I really feel comfortable reading in at this time is English. I would like to get to a level of proficiency in one of the other languages I am familiar with (French, Japanese, German, Spanish) to be comfortable with reading in it, and probably the best way to do that would be to actually try reading a book in one of them, but at the same time it is a daunting prospect. Especially given the number of unread books in English that I own.
How do you usually choose books for your to-read list? This is going to depend on how one is defining a TBR. I have a constantly growing, ever shifting list of books I may want to read someday, and stuff gets added to it with reckless abandon. It just has to look/sound interesting to get a place there. I also have a list of books (yes, in a spreadsheet) that I own that I have not read yet; one could argue that this is a TBR. If, however, one is defining a TBR as a list of books to read in the next month/year...well, I don't actually keep a formal list like that because I'm almost always going to pick my next reads based on mood. I think. It's complicated.
Do you keep track of the books you've read/plan to read? Yes. I have spreadsheets going back to 2007 tracking all the books I've read. Yes, plural. I also have the spreadsheet of books that I own and haven't read yet (a truly daunting number), and accounts on multiple bookish platforms that hold my more general "books I thought looked interesting and may want to read someday" list as well as the books I have read. And daily reading logs (which things I read, when). Tracking my reading is as much of a hobby as the actual reading is.
Do you consider reading manga/comics "reading"? Yes, but I differentiate them on my tracking spreadsheets because it's a different sort of reading. I can get through a 200 page volume of manga or graphic novel in under an hour; a work of prose with the same page count will take considerably longer to read (general minimum of three hours).
Do you often find yourself in a reading slump? How long did your ultimate slump take? Not really? Or...probably not in the way the question is intended. I have burnt out on a particular series or author's works, and if that happens it might be months or even years before I go back to them. Ditto with subgenres. Typically that happens if I read too many back to back, so I do my best to vary my reading and pay attention to my reading appetite, as it were. There are also the "slumps" where I'm reading, but I'm not necessarily super captivated by what I currently have going. Those tend to resolve themselves within a few books, or by adding something wildly different to the mix of my current reading. It's been nearly six years since I last had a day when I didn't read something (and even on that day I had some amount of devotional reading, just not pleasure reading).
And there you have it, probably far more about my quirky reading life than was expected. Thanks for sharing the questionnaire, @kogarashi-art!
