This is why staying out of the bookish community is making my reading better

Boy, that is a big tittle but I couldn't think of anything else so it's gonna be that. So, as I said on my TBRs posts on the last few months I've been feeling a lot of anxiety towards my reading, some of this anxiety is due to:

1. the fact that there is so much books and my reading can't compete with the velocity they are being published

 2. plus all the amazing blacklist books that I still want to get to

3. the fact that I'm not a speed reader, in the last two years I read 100+ books but this isn't something natural to me, since the end of last year I've feeling myself more and more slumpish and not wanting to read at all 

4. feeling anxious towards my reading because OH MY GOD WHAT TO READ NEXT between the options of ARCs, physical TBR and digital TBR, I know this seems so much like a first world problem and it's, I'm very grateful for the fact that I can afford to have new books to read but it doesn't dismiss what this does to me when I need to choose something new to read. 

So on February when I re-started studying I felt like reading was kind of getting in the way of that, because it was supposed to be my fun time and instead it was being a source of anxiety, I knew I needed to change that so here a few things that I've been doing on my daily life that helped me get past this anxiety, at least so far:

1. Limiting my Goodreads time: I used to enter GR every time I entered my browse, it was one of the first sites that I was gonna check out, definitely the first social media that I would, and that wasn't helping me because, of course, there is where people update about their readings and books, so which time I entered I would add a new book to my ever growing TBR, or I would see a new super exciting review about that ARC that wasn't even on my radar but now I really wanted to get to. So I cut it down, a lot, now there is days that I don't even enter there. 

2. This above serves also to Twitter, Book Blogs and any other bookish related website, like Netgalley and Edelweiss. 

3. That GR thing, you know the one where you put your goal number of books for the year always haunted me: even thought I'm always on track or even ahead of schedule since I started doing it I keep thinking that I need to read MORE, to cross that challenge out of my list, the crazy thing is that I know that even if I reach the originally goal sooner I will just update it and get the anxiety to reach it the as quickly as possible again. 

4. The currently reading shelf of GR also haunted me: I don't know if anyone feels like me about this, but for me leaving a book on the currently reading shelf for more than three days starts to giving me anxiety, I feel a pressure to finish it and this pressure takes a lot of the pleasure of reading, it also makes me want to read less. 

To make 3. and 4. better I did number 1. and also I don't update my currently reading shelf anymore, so if I take more than a week to read a book is fine, I know it may sound silly, like I totally could still pressure myself to finish it sooner but somewhat the fact that it isn't on the marked on my GR account I don't feel it anymore, this also helps number one because I don't enter GR unless I've finished to read a book and need to update that. 

5. to the anxious of what to read next I've doing TBRs and it's working, I may not follow it 100% because I'm still a mood reader but when I finish a book I already know what the next one can be, so far it has worked and made me read more from my physical TBR which is great.

So, if you ever felt anxious towards your reading tell me all about it on the comments bellow.

March TBR

Hey guys, I've been pretty absent around the bookish community, not just here but on Goodreads and Twitter too and that is because of my studies, my classes officially started on March but I started studying in February so I've been busy and when I'm not busy with my studies I just want lay down and read or watch tv shows. Also, I think is best for me to stay a little bit off around here because the bookish community was giving me so much anxiety about my readings and so far this month it has really worked for me to stay a bit apart, maybe I'll do a discussion post about these feelings because thinking about it I have a lot of things to say.

ANYWAY, about my reading in February, for like half of the month I followed my TBR and them the rest of it I threw it out of the window and read whichever thing I was in the mood for. I read a total of 6 books, 3 from my TBR and 3 out of it. I started with The Girl From Everywhere (which is a super solid start to a new series, some bother with the non necessary love triangle but other than that great read), a re-read of Fantastic Beasts because I finally got myself a printed copy of it, Rebel of Sands (which is another great start to a new series), This Is Where It Ends (was a mixed bag, you can see my review here, probably should paste it to the blog soon), them I tried and failed again on my A Series A Month challenge with the Red Queen series only reading the first one and the novelas (my quick thoughts on book one and novelas). 

I enjoyed more the books that I read this month than on January but still I was in a funk reading mood, with days without reading and days where I read and was kind of enjoying what I was reading but at the same time was "nah, rater go back to netflix". Glad to say that at this point in March this is over, I found my reading pace and yes it has been slower than in the past few years but it has been more pleasing to me, also regarding this my TBRs have changed - first because of my classes, but secondly, and more important, because I've been feeling the need to branch out of the YA zone.

Don't get me wrong YA is great, is def my favorite gender to read and for comfort but this month I've been reading mostly classics and it has been great! I'm finding it so different and pleasing to be surprise by these new reading experiences, I don't know when there is gonna be a kiss, damn if even there is gonna be a kiss on the whole story and I'm discovering a lot of things. I just bought 4 books today and not a single one of them are YA, actually checking them they are ALL non fiction which is a completely new gender to me.

Now, on to the TBR. I did this TBR in my agenda/study schedule/bullet journal/everything notebook at the end of February and just was lazy to post it here. They are all classics that I need to read for my Literature Class and I already tackled two and am in the end of the third, so that is why there is the two TBRs. 

Mandatory TBR

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For my lit reading I already read Dom Casmurro by Machado de Assis (thoughts here) and The Slum by Aluísio Azevedo (thoughts here). I'm currently re-reading some poems by Fernando Pessoa and next it will be up some sermons by António Vieira. As you can see I'm almost finished with these readings and the month still has a long way to go so that is why I decided to do an optional TBR.

Optional TBR

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These are all the books that I bought today because I'm so excited to finally get them this week and read something out of my comfort zone. The one that I'm most excited about is definitely Being Mortal by Atul Gawande - I've heard amazing things about his works especially his first book but this was the only one in story so yay, I'm excited, the others are Seven Brief Lessons on Physics by Carlo Rovelli - this one caught my attention because damn do I need to finally understand physics this year and it seems to relate it with nature and the universe in general, so I'm curious to read about it, and them Americanah and We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie which everyone seems to be reading and loving, I hope I enjoy it as much, can't wait to read about her ideas! 

That was it for today, tell me on the comments if you read any of these books and what is in YOUR March TBR.