Thought I share this blog I wrote for the blog I keep at Blogspot.com. It's not about health, dieting, or fitness, but I believe Spark People is about the whole person, and reading is a big part of who I am.

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First, I'll start off what I like to read; my favorite genres are historical fiction (especially Tudor era), Amish fiction, history, biographies, and autobiographies. I don't really care for thrillers, mysteries, science fiction, or horror.

I do most most of my reading on my Kindle, but I also still read paperbacks and hardcovers. If there is a particular book I want to read, I don't care what form it's in, whatever is the least expensive works for me. I don't really care for audio books though.

I find most of my Kindle books through Pixel of Ink and Inspired Reads, both can be found on Facebook. I get the daily e-mail newsletters from both. They weed through all the free and discounted Kindle books available at Amazon and feature the highest rated ones in their newsletter. Most of the discounted books are $2.99 and under. The most I've ever paid for a Kindle book is $5, and so far, I've paid for all of them with Amazon gift cards I earn from Swagbucks.com. I've got over 400 books on my Kindle at this time, most of them freebies.

I buy books at used book sales, our town has them put on by a couple of groups twice per year, and also occasionally find them at yard sales. I will also get used books of good quality at AbeBooks.com, Half.com, and Ebay.com.

I enter book giveaways (and have won a few times) at GoodReads.com and ReadItForward.com. I also enter smaller giveaways on blogs. I only enter giveaways for books I truly want to read.

I "like" pages by my favorite authors on Facebook, so that I know when they have a new release coming out. Some of my authors have websites also, where you can sign up for their newsletters.

I use to belong to a few different book clubs over the years, such as Book of the Month or Doubleday. I longer belong to any, but I still get the mailings from them. I look through the brochures for ideas of books I might like to read someday (I keep a handwritten list) before tossing them. About once or twice a year I'll order a few books from one of the online sources I mentioned before, and I'll refer to that list when looking for books to order.

I don't read a lot of books from the "bestseller" list, unless I find them cheap as used books. It's just too expensive to pay full price for books. Many of the free Kindle books I've found are just as good, if not better, than the books on that list. And just because a book is on a bestseller list doesn't mean it's good, I've seen a lot of terrible books that are popular, (50 Shades of Grey is an example). I don't choose a book to read just because "everybody else" is reading it. This is real life, not high school!

I also get ideas from people who like the same kind of books as I do from GoodReads.com (I also keep track of what I read there, and write reviews of what I have read), a book team on SparkPeople.com, and a couple of Facebook groups I belong too, It's A Must Read, and The Whoopie Pie Book Club (which features Amish books.)

I've set a goal to read 90 books this year, and have read 69 so far. I am in the habit of reading for a half hour to an hour before bedtime. I also read during my chemo, and any time I have to sit in a waiting room. Sometimes I even read while watching tv; not during the actual shows, but during the commercials.