2016 Blog in Review

Hi there.

I took a 2016 leave of absence from the blog, but I read so many new books. Ironic, no?

Granted, most of those were books read to or with our son, but it impressed my GoodReads challenge for 2016.

I'm very likely to take a leave of absence for 2017 as well. This will be the third year in a row of being a tax preparer on top of my regular full-time job and in addition to home life, so reading and writing about reading will likely be a low priority. It's still something I very much want to do, but at some point things will have to ease up somewhere in my life for that to happen.

Or I need to re-prioritize things that I do in my spare time.

I mean, do I really need to stare at my phone for 2 hours after the kid goes to bed before I go to bed?

Anyway, my wife got me some very interesting books to read for Christmas, 2 of them sort of by request and one that I didn't even know existed that she surprised me with. I'm looking forward to those and also increasing our son's reading list. We read over 100 books together last year, plus he started school this fall. I can't wait for us to start going back to the library again and restarting our regular routine of book-borrowing and reading. 

Have a great 2017!

My Amazon Store

Check out my new aStore through Amazon. I'm currently loading in some of my favorite books, CDs and more for you to peruse and possibly buy at your leisure. I also have a special section for items that I have mentioned or reviewed on the blog. I will also provide a link to anything I review in case you want to check them out yourself.

This of course is not a plead for any kind of money, but if you were planning on buying something at Amazon anyway, you might as well do it through my aStore and help out the blog at the same time.  Everything you purchase from my aStore provides me with a small affiliate payment which actually comes out of Amazon's profit but does not cost you anything extra.

I also have a little widget in the left margin that features some of the things I've added.  Be sure to check it out!

Reviews

In an attempt to increase my reading comprehension and enjoyment of the books I am reading, I plan on reviewing the books I read. Then, I shall post my reviews and recommendations here to share my enjoyment with you.

I'm building a basic format for the reviews that will probably evolve over time as I get a little more used to the whole process. For now, the format is as such:

• An image of the item I am reviewing either
• a scan of the actual item in hand or
• a stock photo provided by an online store.
• Basic information of the item, including
• Title
• Author/Artist
• Publisher/Producer
• Release Date
• ISBN
• Format
• Length
• Genre
• Time it took for me to read it (estimated reading time)
• Source (where I obtained it)
• aStore Link (see the book in my Amazon Store)
• Rating based on a Likert-type scale (see Rating System page)
• Synopsis/Summary
• Review
• Where to find more information on this book
• Official website of the book (if available)
• A link to the book on Amazon (with an affiliate referral code)
• A link for the book on GoodReads

Each of the affiliate links to Amazon in my reviews rewards me with a small compensation from every purchase made. This does not affect the price on any of the items. Amazon just appoints a portion of its profits gained from selling my referred books to the affiliate code I provide in the URL for the links I provide.

Restarting This Blog

Well, another year has come and gone. It's finally 2014. By May, I will have been out of college for 10 years. August will be our son's fourth birthday. October will mark my seventh year of working for my employer. In November my wife and I will have been married for six years.

Time is so fleeting and fast.

So, with that in mind, I wanted to take a few paragraphs to explain what you see on this blog: LeviSamJuno Reads.

I started this particular blog to separate all of my reading-related posts from my everyday stuff (the latter of which are located on my original blog that also has not been updated for many months). I wanted to have a place where I could sign up for and track reading challenges and book reviews in an uncluttered fashion.

Unfortunately with all the many things going on (the bulk of which is marriage and parenthood), I never really followed through with a lot of that. So I have decided to revamp the whole blog atmosphere. I was never really satisfied with the formats I had for my reviews, and some weird things happened with the formatting when I tried to copy them over here. Part of the revamp involves fixing those formatting errors.

As a result, you can probably see that things are bare here. That's not to indicate there was nothing ever here; it's just that I'm trying to make them better. In the coming weeks some of the book reviews I had will begin popping back up in all their newly reformatted splendor, at which time this particular post will be a bit confusing, I guess.

With this new attempt, here's to the hope of a bigger list of books I have read, challenges I have completed, reviews I have written, and fun stuff accomplished.