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Francesca: Most normal people
track their reading on good reads,
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and some people are really fancy
and use a bullet journal instead.
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And then there's me.
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I have been tracking my
reading for almost two decades.
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Yikes.
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Yes.
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I was born in the 19 hundreds.
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Let's move past it.
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And granted, after almost 20 years,
I have apparently decided that
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one system is not enough for me.
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But 2026 is wild because I am doing eight.
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Yes, you heard that right?
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Eight different ways to
track the same exact books.
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Am I okay?
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Probably not, but am I going
to have the most beautiful
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data at the end of the year?
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Absolutely.
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Hi, I am Francesca, welcome to Under
the Covers, and today I'm gonna be
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walking you through my completely
excessive and slightly unhinged
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reading tracking system for 2026.
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So welcome to the chaos.
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I've broken these down in terms
of what part of my personality
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each one of them is serving.
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But before we get into those
specifics, let me start with my
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newest addition to the family.
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This is the new toy here,
and it's the app margins.
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Now, I didn't plan on using this.
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But then December rolled around
and I saw a lot of people posting
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about margins, and a friend of
mine actually sent me her margins
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wrapped, or like the wrap up of 2025.
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And I got the worst case of FOMO in
my life because it is shiny, it's
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aesthetic, and I realized that I
needed that specific dopamine hit.
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So margins is now added
strictly for the vibes.
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Now I will say that the Goodreads
import worked perfectly, but I
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am still struggling on importing
my story graph data, and that is
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actually where I have my 2025 data.
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so I am a little disappointed that I
still didn't get the beautiful 2025
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wrapped data, but I'm still working on it.
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Now margins is the new kid, but
I am still loyal to my main trio
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that I was planning on using.
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I actually did a whole video recently
about quitting Good reads where I deep
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dived into page bound story graph and
fable, so I'm gonna leave that video here.
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So if you wanna check it out, you can get
in more detail what those apps are like.
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But here's why I am keeping all three of
them for 2026 because I realize that they
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feed different parts of my personality.
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First is the data nerd, and for
that a hundred percent story
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graph that is non-negotiable.
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I need my pie charts.
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I need my data.
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So if I don't log a book into
story graph, did I even read it?
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Probably not.
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In fact, yes, that happens sometimes
because as much as I have eight
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ways to track my reading, sometimes
I forget to track it at all.
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And once in a while I'll look for a book
on story graph or wherever I'm tracking
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and realize that I didn't log it at all,
but I did read it, and so I correct it.
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Look, mistakes happen.
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Second, though is the gamer
in me and that is page bound.
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Sometimes my logging of my
reading is not about the plot.
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It's because of the badges and the
competitiveness and the points and page
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bound turns my reading into a fun quest.
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Plus it really sparks that competitive
side with trying to get more and
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more points like you want to add
recommendations and books like and
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interact in the forums and anything that
will get you an extra set of points.
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I am there.
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The third is the social butterfly
aspect, and for that is Fable.
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This is where I'm gonna go on to talk
about books with other people Fun fact.
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Obviously for the Romanceopoly Reading
Challenge, we do have a Fable Book
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club, so I definitely wanna make
sure that all of my reading for
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the year is also updated on Fable.
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Since I am running a book club and
a reading challenge on the platform.
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Now we have the main trio of apps and the
new
Load full transcript
toy, but we need to talk about Bookly.
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Bookly is to satisfy my
timekeeper personality.
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And this app is strictly
for the act of reading.
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So when I sit down to read a
book, I open Bookly, I go onto
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that book and I hit start.
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and then when I finish for
that session, I hit stop and I
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log where I'm at in the book.
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Whether that is tracking the
pages or tracking the percentage.
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So it tracks my reading speed.
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It tracks the number of sessions
that it takes me to finish a book,
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and it gives me this great report
of my time spent with that book.
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And I'm gonna be honest, I don't
remember to do this, or I don't
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want to do this necessarily for
every single book that I read.
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But I do use it most of the time.
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Fun fact also is this is actually
the only subscription that I pay
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for when it comes to book apps.
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Everything else here, I use the free
version, but Bookly does get my money.
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Why you may ask that is because you
can only have a certain number of
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books that you keep in their system for
free, and after that, you have to pay.
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So it does have the same functionality.
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I actually do like to export that data
of the reading sessions into one of the
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things that I'm gonna talk about next,
but I sometimes don't do it fast enough.
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So 10 books can get limiting
for me and that's the only
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reason that I actually upgraded.
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So where am I logging that data?
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You may ask.
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This is what we're gonna get into my
number six system, which is notion.
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And this is something that I basically
see as my legacy archive Now I personally
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use a template that I design myself.
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I do have it up for sale.
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If you're interested.
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I have a full walkthrough on the
channel of the whole template.
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but all of my reading data lives here.
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Now, you may be asking if you
have all these other apps,
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why do you also need Notion?
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And that is because, well, one,
apps come and go and Notion
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has been there forever for me.
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Obviously not forever.
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There were other things before, but
I want to have one place where all
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of my data can live in one place.
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I am also obsessed with having multi-year
data with actually looking at trends
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in my reading and maybe changing
some of the things that I read or in
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which direction the books that I'm
picking up should go in base of data.
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Or even importing data like my reading
sessions and all of that, the speed
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that I read a book and all of that
data gets also added into notion,
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and that again, gives you practical
information that you can use.
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To determine what books you're gonna read.
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I know that that is a little bit extra,
but I do look at that and also there's
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fun things you can look at, like who are
your most read authors of all time or.
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What genres have you read the most
or tropes or any of those things?
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I know that there are now some apps
like Fable, for example, that easily
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show you what are your most read
authors every year and across all of
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the years that you have logged in there.
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But I definitely love to see
all of that data in Notion.
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So notion is basically the forever
home for my library because yes,
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it also actually has all of my
book inventory in there as well.
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Now, all of those are the fun things.
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Okay.
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But now we're gonna talk about the
business of reading because I do
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have a book blog so I get advanced
reader copies from publishers,
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from authors, from PR companies.
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And I have some loose deadlines, at least
for when I should be reading these books.
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But I have a toxic trait and that is
that I am always late reading arcs.
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In fact, I probably have all of my most
anticipated reads of 2026 sitting in
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my Kindle, and I have not read them.
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I know I have a problem, I do log all
of that stuff in different places, I
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have started using a new app to take
care of this and remind me of things,
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and it's been working out great.
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So the app that I am using is shelf
control, and this is basically
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acting like my manager, I go on
as soon as I get a book for review
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and I simply add it on there.
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and then I can open the app and see
in just chronological order, what are
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the books that I should be reading
first in order of my due dates.
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I used to manage all of
this by just creating Kindle
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Collections for every month.
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But right now I need an app that can
just remind me and it keeps me on
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track and not getting blacklisted.
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And then finally number eight
is a physical reading journal.
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Now I have been using reading
journals off and on for many
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years, but for the past two years
I haven't used the reading journal.
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So in 2026, I am going back
to a physical reading journal,
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which I am super excited about.
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I haven't set this one up yet.
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But we'll be getting to that and you
guys will see a video of that soon.
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But I think that sometimes just
tapping on a screen is not enough.
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And a physical reading journal
is great for the artist in me.
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I need to use stickers, I need to use
color, I need to print out covers.
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I need to make things pretty.
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I tried doing that on a digital
reading journal last year and
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I didn't really stick with it.
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So I think I'm gonna go back to paper
because I have such a strong desire this
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year of doing a lot of things more analog.
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I don't know if that is just
me or if that is something that
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we're all collectively feeling.
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but I did get this beautiful new journal.
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Fun fact.
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I actually started setting up a whole
different notebook and I was quite
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far along in all my setup in that one.
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And then I decided that I wanted to buy
one of these beautiful tiefossi notebooks.
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So I am going to be resetting
everything and I will be recording
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it and sharing that with you guys.
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but if that's any indication of
what 2026 is going to be like, it's
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already on a rough start because I
basically had everything mostly done
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in December and now I bought a new
notebook and here we are already.
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Halfway into January
and I have nothing done.
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So off to a great start.
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But there you have it.
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Those are the eight ways that I'm
gonna be tracking my reading in 2026.
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One reader, eight systems.
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Absolutely no chill.
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It's okay.
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Let me know in the comments if you're
a good reads only normal person or
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if you're a chaos goblin like me.
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What are you going to be using
to track your reading in 2026?
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And now I think I need to
go update my eight different
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percentages in different places.
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So pray for me and I will
see you in the next video.
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Bye.