In the style of 2020, I have been on an absolute reading TEAR! OK, so like last year, little of it has involved ACTUAL text. I don't know when my fascination with audiobooks first began—my first one was either in 1999 or 2000—in that space, they were always WAY TOO pricey to devour. Even years later, Audible's $15/month for a SINGLE book per month made it out-of-reach—at least for a voracious appetite. I mean, C'MON, MAN—is this a pre-Gutenberg press world? Do I gotta find my own monk to narrate this thing?

The first time I heard about Libby/Overdrive wasn't from my local library, rather it was on an Internet forum. I knew I had to make that happen! I found my local library to have relevancy again! Not only that, but I could invoke a throwback by enlisting my grandparents' library in Brooklyn.

It's been a rich resource to mine. Now, I don't discount the value of textual books, but rarely have I made the time to solely focus on a resource that requires singular focus. It's a multithread world!

Of course, when I'm carting around a wheelbarrow pile of books, I gotta find some way to bring order to the chaos. While I considered and compiled my locally hosted version of a reading list, ultimately, my static solution was a bit unwieldy to implement—at least in this stage where I'm stuck between my 3-prong approach and that with subcategories.

While Goodreads always imparts on me some of Bezos' ickiness, I'm liking how LibraryThing has evolved to provide plenty of customization. I even like its fast export-to-XLS option so I can break my data out if I choose to do so. Sure, there are social aspects to the platform, but unlike Goodreads, it enables a guy like me, who thinks some random stranger on the Internet may not be the best review resource, to not have that arbitrary gunk clogging up his display's real estate.

Lastly, it enables me to run with a project I've been considering for some time: catalog my own collection so that I may integrate them into my time queue—or at least attain a level of awareness so that I can weigh what needs to be shelved to implement them.