Category: Culture

I’m still tracking my reading with Goodreads, which continues to be primarily eBooks sourced from my local library. I missed doing a summary post in last year, in brief I read 35 books (11,714 pages) in 2020. This was fewer than in 2019.

2021 was a lot like 2020, but somehow I read a lot more books. 64 books (20,858 pages). My goal was 35, and I’ll probably use that as my goal for 2022.

It seems the image dump of the titles is roughly the order I read them in. You can see I read a fair number of series. For the most part to find new material I searched what was available to borrow in random order. I got a few nice surprises.

I really enjoyed the Sandman Slim series. The Diabolic series also stands out as a fun read. I generally rate most books 3 stars, but this year I was more critical and gave out more 2 star reviews than I had in the past. Only The Terminal Experiment and Sandman Slim got 4 stars from me.

With so many rich media experiences, I still think it’s important to disconnect and read. Better still to pick up a paper book and give your eyes something different to stare at. The local library is a great resource not only for books, I discovered that the magazine selection and software presentation was pretty good on my tablet.

I’ve been using Goodreads for several years to track my reading. It’s been interesting to see what a few of my friends are reading, and more generally what people as a whole think of the books that I’ve been reading. The other thing that appeals to me as I’ve switched heavily into reading ebooks, is that it gives me a sense of ‘collecting a shelf of books’ – without the actual books. I’ve also become a big user of the local library (and it’s lending of ebooks).

In 2019 I read 50 books, this is actually fairly typical for me, but I don’t always manage 50 a year. This is why I set my goal to 35, a number I’m certain to get to (in 2017 I only read 37). Breaking the goal gives me that sense of over-achieving and avoids me stressing at the end of the year.

You can also visit my Goodreads profile.

My reading is almost exclusively science fiction or fantasy.  It appears that the reading challenge shows the titles in reverse order, as the 1st book I read last year was The Martian (I was re-reading it actually). I’d recommend the book, and the movie, both are very MacGyver.

The Cosmic Trilogy was a physical book that I dragged through at the cottage over several visits. It was terrible, I should have just stopped reading it, but I finally finished it. Do not read this book! Certainly the worst book I read in 2019.

I will call out a few great reads. Atemis by Andy Weir. The Legend series by Marie Wu (another re-read). I really enjoyed the Mortal Engines series by Philip Reeve, very steam punk.

I’m already into my 2nd book of 2020, and I’ve got some great titles waiting for me to get to. It should be a good reading year.

It is not uncommon to have purchased something from eBay, I’ve had an account for several years and tend to buy something every couple of months.  Most of the items I buy on eBay are low cost and generally hard to find locally.  I’d often thought about selling stuff on eBay but just never got started.. until now.

What started this off was a sweep through some of the gadgets and whatnot that we’ve got cluttering up our home office.  This stuff has to go, and if it has value let’s sell it – otherwise its time to eCycle it.  I initially thought I’d start by selling some N64 games, but the game values (<$5) far outweigh the shipping costs.  So I figured I’d move onto the iPod that was no longer being loved ever since the iTouch arrived.

I used eBay to research what the going price was for an iPod in the condition mine was, and priced it on the lower end as a starting point.  I set a $10 USD flat rate for shipping since if I shipped to California it would be around $8 shipping + $2 for the bubble mailer.  Had someone in Vancouver bought it, I would have lost money on the flat rate shipping (about $4)!  Shipping is the first real hurdle you need to get over as a seller, and I think it is worse for Canadians (both as sellers, and buyers).

Lucky me, as a first time seller my first 5 listings are fee free!  Cool.  Of course, it took nearly 24hrs for my item to appear in any search results (trust me I tried).  No worries, it was a 7 day listing so lots of time for people to find it and bid.

Days passed.  I watched several broken iPod’s get more bidding activity and a higher price than my item.  I could see from the eBay dashboard that after 6 days, only 5 page views of my item had happened (2 which were mine!).  Then on the 6th day, the watchers arrived – 8 watchers tracking my item – there is hope.  The number of views rapidly climbed.

With less than 6 hours to go in the auction the bidding started.  My $30USD start price, jumped up rapidly.  17 bids later it sold for $76USD + $10USD shipping, the winning bid was made in the last minute of the auction from a bidder with no previous bids on my item.

After that it was smooth sailing.  Payment was via PayPal (who take a small percentage).  A quick trip to the post office and the iPod is on its way to the winner.  It has been an interesting experience, one I plan to repeat.