My Kindle Reading Streak

According to the Kindle app on my phone my longest Kindle Reading Streak was 126 days. I say “was”, because I lost it two days ago and now I am back to a one day reading streak. I hate that apps like Kindle count reading streaks as “days of reading in a row” because sometimes simply opening the app, and reading one page was enough to count it as a streak.

The information is meaningless. I would like a different way of counting streaks. Imagine if we could have streaks such as “Read at least one book a week” streaks. It would be nice to have more flexibility, and to have goals that have more meaning.

The paradox of losing that reading streak, on one app, is that I read from Audible almost every single day, and from the kindle almost every day. In effect I do read every day. I have been reading every day for years by now, so whether n app counts my reading or not doesn’t matter.

As i said a few days ago, by losing my streak it gives me the opportunity to read through the books I pick up on my daily walks, rather than electronic books. I need to read through the physical books because they take physical space, and either I need new shelves, or I need to read and put those books back into circulation.

Although called a “reading challenge” by GoodReads I prefer to think of it as a reading goal. The goal of reading 52 books in a single year, the goal of reading one book per week. Reading every day is easy, it is finishing books that is a challenge. I have a lot of unfinished books. My reading goal will help me work my way through the unfinished books. Once they’re finished I can drop them at one of the six or seven reading libraries I visit on my daily walks.

And Finally

Twitter wants to start revenue sharing with its users, but only those that buy in. I see this as a mistake. Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and many other networks lost value because they focused on encouraging spamming and clickbait rather than valuable content and conversations. If I didn’t think I would regret it, I would delete my account.