Reflections on My Reading Habits

By a Pisces who loves to get lost in new worlds via words

Side ramble to set my current vibes:

I have been working through The Artist Way, more coming on this once I finish. I have been going through the program with an emphasis on GRACE, aka not the way it is intended to be handled. So, I am SLOWLY working my way through it. And I am at this point determined to finish. Why do am I visiting this tangent in a piece about my reading reflection? Well, two reasons. One morning pages* took up my morning reading time, and the program made me reflection on my reading habits too.

(*3 pages of journaling to be done every morning.)

Do I like morning pages? YES. But at this point I MISS my morning reading time. It kind of let me relax before my day started. It was really nice that I had that time already cleared out and was able to plop in morning pages without much altering of my already sacred morning time. I started this in February, and well I miss my sacred reading time. I tried to shrink to two pages. Today, I actually said FUCK IT for the first time that I had the time to do them, and chose to read. And that brought me back to this piece that I drafted months ago reflecting on my reading habits.

The more FOCUSED beginning:

My reading dream is essentially: QUALITY OVER QUANTITY. (My tarot deck collection giving me the side eye right now…)

ER EHM….as I was saying I want to talk about QUALITY over QUANTITY. (My unread book pile that could literally likely press me to death if applied to a board a la Giles Corey who fought for his family to prosper over himself…also giving me the side eye.)

Basically, I am not an expert in this category and succumb to the hustle of it all. However, I do try to check myself. (And I try to DNF more too.) I just have some reflections on how my reading habits have changed over the years and what my goals looked like and what they have reconstructed themselves into.

Basically, this year my break from morning readings, and acknowledging that I sometimes use a book as a distraction similar to a doom scroll, has lead me to try to not do that. I do prefer to open a book when I am in a doom scroll space though because I want to choose a book over that.

One of my pitfalls tends to come in the fact that I like to track. I have a South Node in Virgo, if you are into astrology.

However, tracking got toxic. I have two tracking holes that I have so far been trapped in. One was the gotta catch ‘em all YEARLY READING GOAL. I think most readers get hit with the adrenaline of this at one point or another. I was in the trenches of HOW MANY CAN I READ!? Like a dragon hoarding gold and trinkets. I love trinkets too, no hate to the dragon. I was reading Goosebumps book one December to hit 100. I did actually want to read through the Goosebumps books to see how they held up. But it was kind of toxic when I was choosing books that I could read to complete the goal as I got to the end of the year.

Now, I choose a reasonable-low goal just to track against. It is not so much a goal as a random number to see how my year is holding up…it is usually between 24-35. This year it is 30, I am currently on book 21 (it is mid-July). I like to keep it low though so I don’t feel any kind of way if life happens to happen extra hard one year and I don’t hit this goal. I am a sensitive little Pisces what can I say.

I use two apps to track, Storygraph & Fable. I prefer Storygraph as a tracker as it lets me pick the type of book I am consuming (digital, audio, physical) and it is easier to count rereads, and Fable for social things and book clubs. It would be cool if you could label the books from the library too, someone add it!

My other more recent niche was the reading everyday. Each app tracks this too if you update your progress. I do a page count in Storygraph because sometimes I take MONTHS to finish a nonfiction and I have a horrible recollection of linear time. So it is nice to see when I started something I may have put down and returned too. But I was like getting mad I ruined my days read in row number because I had a migraine. Like…What?!

Despite me making this habit into something negative, this did help build a daily morning reading habit that I adore. (See the Morning Pages yap at the beginning to see how that is going now…) Honestly, though if I did not already have this ritual setup, I think my Morning Pages would not have had such a solid foundation on which to build off of. Ultimately, this streak tracking obsession let me find ways to spend time reading when I could in little moments where I am not scrolling, but now reading. And that is why I always like to have an EBook that I can sync with my phone’s app if I cannot carry my device. Essentially, I like to always have a book on me even when a physcial one would be impractical.

I am trying to be better at reading what I want to read. && Reading books I would never pick up that my book clubs reads and READING MY PHYSICAL TBR.

I do post books here and on instagram because honestly I would forget I read them and what I thought about them because I read a decent amount (in my opinion) each year. And that is just how my brain is sometimes. It needs a little something to trigger the memories.

I have so many interests (…jack of all trade, master of none, better than a master of one?). I want to focus on reading for my interests. So here is where I am trying to value quality. A lot of my interests result in me picking up nonfiction books, which can be dry. THESE TAKE TIME TO GET THROUGH. And I want to give them the time they need because they are areas of interest for me. And thus quality over quantity. Also, this messes with any stats about how fast I read books because some of the more intense ones can take me over a year. I also tend to get distracted and come back to a tome a year later because something reignited my flame of interest in the topic. (I am suspicious that I may have some neurodivergence playing into this trait, that could possibly fall into the ADHD-Austism category?)

I just like to get lost too (Did you know I have a Pisces Sun conjunct EXACTLY a North Node in Pisces, and my rising is also Pisces?!). I love fiction. I really really love getting lost in a world that is not here… So, in addition to ALWAYS having an ebook, I like a fiction. So essentially, I will never not have three books opened to me (But usually more like 5-7). Because of my interests. I like looking at my reading like this versus gotta catch and read them all. Because there are a lot and I have a collection that needs to be touched and possibly set free if I am not a super fan which brings me to DNFing.

Ultimately, I don’t love to DNF, but I want to spend my reading time with things I really wanna read. Especially since there are so many options to read from. I am trying to be more active in saying ‘hey, I am not enjoying whatever it is that is going on here and it is time for me to stop participating in it.’ Which is probably also a good lesson to bring into real life too. It is hard for me to not want to see if it gets better, or to find the point if it all. However, I don’t usually get those rewards, if I am already annoyed in the middle. And it is better to lose the count to the quality.

I don’t care if you read to get numbers down. I am honestly just happy to hear people are reading! This is just my little experience and reflection on how I have transformed through the more recent years as a human who adores the written word. (I love a good book about words too!)

I think reading is such an important thing. I like learning new facts, and that was why I started bringing nonfiction into my reading. Then, I discovered that the stories of REAL humans can be as wild and tantalizing as the fiction books that I devour && sometimes ever more so!!! I love a nonfiction that makes you question if it is in fact nonfiction. This is not to take away any merit from fiction. I think fiction teaches amazing lessons about humanity. How annoying we can be? Yea. How brave we can be? What we can do when we put our minds to it…and how to have grace. How to accept and be understanding (with limits of course)! So, to me I am happy that you read. It could be a magazine. It could be an news article on your phone. Just read. It is magic.

Always thank you for taking the time to read my little rambles & thoughts,

Elizabeth

Boars of Valor

P.S. If you have been here since the beginning, I am still going to post about books and the rest of 2025’s little blurb is pending. I hyper focus on it every so often and it is nearly complete! 2026 has been a ride…