I was up around 8 AM and had a nice big breakfast. I thought about doing some more work on the book collection database, but I decided instead to spend the day reading. I have yet to complete my third book for the year and January is almost over. Three books! Compare that to, say, January 1999 when I read 11 books that month alone! Since 1996, I have been trying to read at a pace of 1 book per week, regardless of length, but I have gotten off to a slow start this year (and even the end of last year). There are several reasons for this:

1. I have been doing other things. I spend 1-1/2 hours per day at the gym. I have been getting up earlier because of that and going to bed much earlier, which cuts into reading time.
2. I have been trying to read more short fiction from the magazines and that eats into book-reading time
3. I have been putting a lot of time in to the book collection and reading list database and that has been eating a bunch of time
4. I have been watching a lot of TiVo’d TV, or shows that I download from the iTunes store and that is a major time whore.
5. I have been trying to write more and that takes time

I suppose I have prioritized my regular reading lower than these other things, but there are also only so many hours in the day. I often wonder how people out there can read all of the stories that appear in the magazines, have time to read books, write, and do everything else (including raise a family), when here I am struggling just to get through a book a week.

In any event, I decided that today, I would set everything else aside and trying and finish up Robert Silverberg’s Son of Man and then get started on the next book. It’s a cool, nasty-looking day out which is the perfect kind of day to spend reading (and would be even better if I had a fireplace).