The Finished Books Tag

Thank you Sahi @ My World of Books for tagging me to write this post 🙂 I hope my tag is at least half as informative and interesting as yours 🙂 You can check out her answers to this tag here.

Here are my responses to some of the questions regarding my reading process 🙂

Do you keep a list of the books you’ve read?

Yes, I actually started this when I became a member of Goodreads. At first Goodreads was the only place I’d track my books – books that I’ve read, currently reading or want to read. But over the last two years, I’ve also been maintaining a book tracking journal – nothing fancy, but I usually create a tentative TBR list at the beginning of each month and write a short summary of each book I read, as and when I finish them 🙂

If you record statistics, what statistics do you record?

No, I haven’t been recording any statistics other than the count of books I’ve read, via Goodreads 🙂 Maybe something to consider going forward, to check what genres I read, so that I can pick up more genres and different authors.

Do you give 5-star ratings for books and if so, what do you score books out of and how do you come about this score?

I used to rate books on the following criteria –  story, characters, entertainment and did I learn anything new from the book, to give it a 5-star rating or not. But then I just became a really no-fuss reader and started giving 5-star ratings to any books that struck a chord with me, made me cry, made me laugh – basically entertained me or moved me 🙂

Do you review books?

Umm, yes, but I don’t do a lot of formal or author requested reviews, since I don’t like the pressure and I don’t like saying I didn’t like the book, if I really didn’t like it, since I know how hard it is to write or publish a book, and I dislike being dishonest too 🙂 So, I just review for fun, for my personal use and maybe if other readers are interested to know about my thoughts on a book I read, or if I want to discuss the book with other readers. I do support a few authors, whose street team I’m on, so I do review their ARCs too 🙂

Where do you put your finished books?

If its an e-book or audio book then on a ‘Read’ shelf on Goodreads. And if its a physical book that I own, then I have the left hand side of my current bookshelf for the read books, which is slowly getting filled up. So I might have to devise a new mechanism soon! 😉

How do you pick your next book?

I’m a half and half kind of reader. So part of my next book pick is based on the book club selections for the month and the other part is purely based on my mood, so whatever satisfies my mood from the million recommendations that I list down everywhere 🙂

Do you have any other rituals for when you have finished a book?

Oh absolutely! I’m a very ritual sort of person, when it comes to personal things 😀 So I do the following when I finish a book:

• Close the book or end the e-book and shut my eyes for a few seconds to savor the entire book in a sort of mental flashback in my head
• Take Instagram/blog worthy pictures  -sorry, let me change that to ‘Try to take’..LOL
• Write my personal review notes for the book in my book journal
• Write a more politically correct review on my blog and Goodreads
• Share my blog on FB and post the Instagram picture
• Update Goodreads to ‘Finished reading’ for that book
• Place physical copy of book on the Read shelf of my bookshelf and feel really proud of myself 😀
• Wait for a day or two, depending on how much impact the book had on me, before picking up my next read 😀

So, that’s it!! Those were some of my book-ish rituals. I hope they weren’t too boring! 😀

I tag:

The Bookaholic

Laughter Brothers

That Reader Bee