it helps me to use different formats. audiobooks for fun, text for academia.

as for feeling like you're wasting time, scheduling yourself really well is the best advice i could give. i only read outside of my studies while at lunch, after before 9 am or after 8 pm, or on saturdays or wednesdays (my days off). otherwise, i have time set aside for reading for my classes. i don't worry about what i should be reading for my classes while i'm reading for fun because it has a different time and place

you make a good point. i dnf'd alseep in a sea of stars last year. it wasn't bad it was just so long and so cliche that i couldn't handle 400 more pages of it.

honestly i don't feel super good about giving a dnf a rating at all in a way. beyond what it being a dnf implies. i didn't read the whole thing, after all

i use storygraph which allows .25, .5, and .75 as well, but for simplicity i'll stick mostly with whole numbers:

5 - one of my favorites of all time. the last time i read something that reached this was fall 2021

4 - very good book, either is just incredibly well written or would recommend to anyone

3 - good book, happy to recommend to some

2.5 - total middle of the road, as would be implied by it's position in the middle of the scale. books here are okay. i liked or appreciated everything above this and did not like anything below

2 - bad book that maybe had some good elements, could have been good if executed better

1 - really bad (this would be where dnfs go)

< 1 - dogshit, i could talk about how much i hate it for hours. i finish these out of morbid curiosity (coincidentally, the last time i read one down here was also fall 2021, a week or so after reading the 5 star one lol)

i've been slowwwwwly making my way through Independent People by Halldór Laxness since august. currently a 3rd of the way through.

i know i can love this novel if im at the right place when i pick it up but i hardly ever find myself at that place. some of it has been absolutely incredible, most of it has been a struggle.