I have been treated so unfairly! *sob*

I'm going to need a moment.

Actually, I'm going to need several moments, a fresh glass of iced tea, and possibly one of my cats to come sit on me while I process this, because I have just discovered something that has shaken me to my very core.

My Kindle Reading Challenge says I have read 38 books this year.

...thirty-eight.

I want you to sit with that number for a second. Really let it settle. And then I want you to understand that this number is not just wrong — it is cosmically, catastrophically, personally offensive wrong, and I have feelings about it. Many feelings. Loud feelings. Feelings that needed their own blog post.

Here Is My Problem

Kindle — my beloved, my constant companion, the little device that has brought me so much joy — is only counting new books. Books I haven't read before. First-time reads.

Which means every single re-read I did this year?

Gone. Vanished. Disappeared into the void like they never happened.

I'm sorry, WHAT?! I READ those books!! My eyeballs went over every single word! My brain did the reading thing! I laughed, I swooned, I stayed up until 3am AGAIN even though I already knew exactly what was going to happen — and none of it counts?!

collapses dramatically onto the nearest available surface

Do You Want to Know What I Actually Read This Year?

DO YOU? ARE YOU SURE?

Because I'm going to tell you. I'm going to tell you, and then I'm going to need you to validate my outrage, because this is a lot:

• Christine Feehan's Dark series — all 38 books. THIRTY-EIGHT BOOKS, people.

• RJ Blain's Magical Romantic Comedy (with a Body Count) series — all 23 books

• SE Babin's Cocktails in Hell series — all 8 books

• SE Babin's Trailer Park Pennsylvania series — all 3 books

• RJ Blain's Lowrance Vampires series — all 3 books

• Elise Noble's Blackstone House series — all 6 books

38 + 38 + 23 + 8 + 3 + 3 + 6 = my ACTUAL number is somewhere north of 80 books just from what I can remember. The injustice is REAL. 😄

And those are just the ones I can remember off the top of my head. Who knows how many more are out there, lost to the void, unacknowledged, uncounted, weeping softly in the shadow realm.

weeps softly at the injustice of it all, and takes a long, mournful sip of my beloved iced tea

I re-read because I LOVE these books. Because they're GOOD. Because sometimes you just need to go back to something warm and familiar and wonderful, like visiting a friend — except the friend is a 700-page paranormal romance and you've read it six times and you will read it six more, AND IT SHOULD COUNT.

Every page I turned was a page I read. Every chapter I devoured at 2am because I have zero self-control.

In Conclusion

I read a LOT of books this year. A genuinely embarrassing, gloriously excessive, absolutely zero-regrets amount of books. And somewhere out there, my real reading number exists — uncounted, unloved, tragically invisible to the algorithm.

Thirty-eight.

Thirty-eight, it says.

I need to go lie down.

Tobi and Levi come to sit on me in solidarity

I feel slightly better

Not much though

Filed under: Books, Kindle, The Injustice of Statistics, Wailing Into The Void