Read all the installments of “My DRM-Free Year”
Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov-Dec
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It was a quiet October for me. It was a busy month for me at school (culminating in yesterday’s Day of Frenzy, aka Halloween) and while I read a lot, I did not read many books. What happened?
1) I became a news junkie. With my go-to newspaper erecting a paywall last month, I went looking elsewhere for my daily news fix, and as a result added several new sites to my daily rounds. I also discovered that the free local commuter newspaper has a digital version on Apple’s Newstand, so I started reading that. The paper giveaway is mini-sized, so I can read it comfortably on my iPad, and it can be downloaded as well for offline reading.
2) A few pre-Christmas big releases starting coming out, so I turned to the library. My policy this year has been that while I will not purchase DRM-laden books, I’ll still read them if I can get them from the library since that is a use of DRM that feels fair to me. If it’s only a borrow, that’s a different story than shelling out money for it! So I got on the waitlist for a few anticipated titles, and borrowed two other ones: the disappointing Allegiant by Veronica Roth, which concluded a trilogy I had been reading, and the latest title in Nora Robert’s voluminous J.D. Robb series.
3) The movie and gaming people had their big releases too, and I have been sending some of my entertainment dollars their way. It’s an unfortunate reality of life for the non-billionaire: there is a finite amount to spend and it must be shared amongst several categories. The Beloved and I finally got our Xbox Kinect hooked up, and we spent a little on games for that. There were some movies we wanted to see. The entertainment pie had to skew a little more to other categories.
I plan to go out with a bang in November, though—I am passing on Nanowrimo this year because I have some other stuff going on, so in lieu of voracious writing, I am going to do some voracious reading and aim to shrink down my to-read pile so I can start the new year with a cleaner slate. I’ll finish out the year with a December wrap-up post where I detail what I have learned, and where I’ll be shopping for books come 2014. Happy November, everyone!
