How much do you read in a year?

Read shorter books.

I mean, a significant portion of what I read in a year is not in book format.

That said, I had a dream last night where I was reading a modest and unimpressive novel in a day. My mother (in the dream) asked if she should read it, and I was like, well, if you can get it done in a day, maybe, but if not, it's probably not worth it.

I kept track a few years ago and was surprised to hit 50 before autumn. But there was some Terry Pratchett candy in there for every tome (probably 5 for every 3).

Usually about 25. I haven't read anything yet this year, though. :/

Early days!

I've been meaning to get a Granta subscription for ages, but maybe I should put it off until I've succeeded or failed at this mammoth task. Reading a book in a week isn't a problem but keeping it up for a year might be. Could be tricky to find enough to keep me interested (obv there are more than 50 books out there I would want to read but coming up with them all at once is another matter).

Hard to think of fifty books you want to read over the course of a year? Jeez - I could list a thousand books I want to read today no problem. If you're worried about it, create one of those wish lists things and whenever you think of a new book add it to the list - then when you're not sure what to read next - check the list. It seems like every thime I read a good book, it leads me to at least a few more books I want to read - either by the same author - or books referenced in the book.

Reading an average length book a week just means reading 30-40 pages a day - which isn't really very much.

Last year I read 78 (but 10-15 were YA)

This year so far I have read 8, but I am working on 'Sometimes A Great Notion' now, so I will be sowed waaaay down.

slowed

i think i read bewteen 25 to 30 a year.

Probably about 30-35 a year. This excludes all the bits and pieces, false starts and rejects.

Martin Amis has written that while in his twenties he was reading a novel a day. (Somewhere in Experience.)

That's a lot of time to spend in the bathroom.

martin amis had the luxury to read a book each day because he was a rich famous poncy son of a rich famous poncy dad

70 - 127 books in a year, over the past six years (I keep a reading journal).

But I work from home and would rather read than watch TV or movies or do other things.

estimating around 40. started a reading journal list recently so this time next year I'll know exactly.

One year I kept a list to see what I managed, and the number was about 300 in a year, with a few provisos...

1. I'm a lazy bastard who reads a lot
2. I don't drive and go everywhere by bus, so every work day that's at least 1-1.5 hours of extra reading time
3. I have bouts of insomnia, not getting to sleep until 2 or 3am, so that helps too
4. Most TV is crap, and I've got pretty good at turning it off rather than just watching whatever's on
5. I read a lot of novellas

I've been meaning to get a Granta subscription for ages

I've toyed with that idea in the past, but whenever I buy the odd issue, half of it seems to be extracts from upcoming novels rather than independent stories. I'm sure it adds kudos to the mag to have "new" writing from Ian McEwen or Zadie Smith, but that stuff'll be published 6 months later in hard covers anyway. If there's one thing that shits me, it's book extracts. If it's good, you want to read the whole book, not just a bit, and if it's bad, why read it at all?

The last few years - since I've been keeping track, that it - I've averaged 35 per year. I'm aiming to increase it. This means less time online - we'll see how I manage it.

gah typo

Frau Klata and I set ourselves a target of 50 in 2002. I managed it, but she got stuck on 49. Since then she's kept a journal and averages about 25 to 35 a year. I rested on my laurels and stopped noting which books I've read. I really wish I'd kept it up, as there are now loads of books which I genuinely can't remember whether I've read or not (it makes me question how much I'm really getting out of my reading - I read 'Football Against the Enemy' recently, and only realised at the very end that I'd already read it). Plus it'd be quite interesting for the inner trainspotter, like Art Garfunkel's list.

I read books much less than I used to, yet I'd guess I spend twice as much time reading stuff. I'd be surprised if I read twenty a year now. The internet is the reason why. Most of my reading is now magazines, comment pieces and blogs. I'm not sure this is a healthy development.

I thought Artie was reading the dictionary, page-by-page, from A-Z. I guess maybe he finally finished that one.

Hey so I managed 60 last year, not bad, expecially considering I didn't read anything in April or May. Hardest thing was finding things to read, using only small local library and 2nd hand shops. Could have made things easier for myself with inter-library loans and buying online tho. I ended up reading a hell of a lot of books that were just 'OK', with maybe only half a dozen 'great will read again', and an equal number of 'urgh awful tosh'.

Am gonna slow down this year, take my time with a more careful selection, maybe some giant doorstops, e.g. Proust...

Have just taken out a Granta subscription - possibly even better value for money was the job lot of the first hundred issues on eBay for £35...

Agree with JM on the extract issue - it's annoying, but as a magazine of 'new writing' it does what it says on the cover. The extracts aren't usually left hanging too terribly either - the reportage is pretty good (especially the Paris banlieue piece in 101 and the Rise of the British Jihad (103).

I'm still reading IJ, and will be for another 2 weeks probably, so I'm handicapped for the year already--but maybe I'll keep track this year.

last may, I started using one of those websites to keep track of what I read, and apparently I've gone through 27 books (mostly novels) since then. that seems like a pretty nice pace.

i'm constantly reading magazines and newspapers, so if i cut that out i would get a lot more books read. but i can't seem to do that. i spent hours reading magazines and the sunday times yesterday. which means i couldn't finish my book like i thought i would.

"Hardest thing was finding things to read"

this seems crazy to me! but i am a hoarder. if you lived near me, ledge, i'd let you take stuff from my overstuffed bookshelves. i've got years of reading on them.

It is kinda crazy. I guess I just wasn't organised enough, relying too much on random trawling of less than inspiring library bookshelves.

Not Nearly Enough.

can you reserve items in your local library, ledge? even using the central library nearby, i'd say half of the stuff i pickup is reservations from other branches.

i think my level of reading is probably reasonably constant, but sometimes it manifests itself in other mediums etc. like i don't think i read any fiction during the election build up because i was reading blogs etc. it's also subject to rhythms; like getting a good chain of books will spur me to read more, whereas hitting a wall will deter me from picking anything up.

i find myself re-reading so many books that i've handicapped myself from the start.

i have wanted to re-read delillo's white noise for a couple of years but will not let myself. my granddad says he could sit around rereading raymond chandler all day, but he's aware of the time limit implications, so should venture anew.

Am trying that. Been waiting nearly two weeks for my items to arrive, so far.

xp. Rereading still counts as reading!

xp again.

ok so because of this thread i ended up keeping a spreadsheet of my reading habits, out of curiosity, and the results are:
59 books were started
52 were completed

14 completed but i had a lot of stuff going on the first 8 months so it's more like 14 since july. i think i usually read 25-30.

23 last year, including audiobooks while driving (about ten of these). The last three months were spent solely on Many Years From Now by Paul McCartney. Dunno why it took me so long.

i like the idea that paul mccartney's autobio (?) is actually, like, proustian in its complexity - that would be great

i always mean to keep track and then i never do. it's not really the point though.

i used to read a lot of books, now i read a lot of internet

^^^and I

the internet and i, a book by me

had an idea for a romcom called "you and me, the night and the internet" but i'm not sure it'd take off

http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:Y1mJ1kqFNOeV7M:http://tf.org/images/covers/YouveGotMail.jpg

i used to read a lot of books, now i read a lot of internet
― ice cr?m, Saturday, January 2, 2010 9:30 AM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark

This. These days I start a lot of books but don't actually finish that many. If it's not keeping my attention I just abandon it. This is a bad habit though and I'm trying to break it or at least learn to keep plugging away unless the book is truly awful.

Reading a collection of short stories right now which is awesome for short attention spans like the one I seem to have developed. Plus, I really like short stories in general so it's a win win situation.

Plenty of short stories for you on the ILX books of the 00s poll. Other the odd one in The New Yorker, I haven't read a short story for years.

Oh thanks! I love them. I actually studied lit/writing in college and s stories were always my favorite type of fiction for both reading and writing. Not that I've written one in years but still.

read a couple short story books this year

Any you would recommend?

welp i read the collected stories of leonard michaels and tell me by mary robison - they were both totally good and worthwhile but the michaels was a lil mid century realist hard truths 4 u style for me and as for the robison you should prob read her novels first cause theyre better

i used to read a lot of books, now i read a lot of internet
--ice cr?m

they need to put more books on the Internet

come on, islate

mostly books i read are novels / mostly internet i read are news

which has lead to a shift in the sparkle my imaginarium / facts for you balance that im not sure is wholly virtuous

i seriously thought about getting a kindle for the first time a couple of days ago based on the logic that i zone out after reading a couple of pages of printed text, but can sit reading mundane NYT articles for ten hours straight.

yeah the i cant read long pieces on a screen phenomenon is a complete mystery to me

I added up the monthly lists I kept last year and apparently I read 71 books in 2009. I can think of 4-5 others that I didn't finish. No real patterns - I seem to spend 1-2 weeks on a single book and then go through 3-4 in a single week following. An almost equal amt of Fiction (38) and Non-fiction (33). 48 male authors and only 20 female - and 9 of those female books are by Joan Didion. Of the fiction, I read 30 novels, 7 story collections, and 1 play.

i have read one book so far this year and am on the second, the journal thing sounds like a good idea, i abandon everything now.

i tried to keep a list and ended up with 28 books in 2009 but i think i forgot some. not v many considering i was unemployed for 6 months, damn. i'm gonna try and get to 50 this year. being a v slow reader and terrible short attention span don't help, tho.

i think it was more like 17 for me, now that i think about it. i didn't keep a list like i usually do.

i think i should go for 50 this year though. i could read a lot more than i do.

I read a lot of genre fic and YA stuff, so it inflates my numbers but those things can be read in 1-2 days. Of course there's some genre stuff that's heavier and slower, but in general...

So I prob read 3-6 books a week but that's not fair compared to ILXors who are wading in to slower literary fic.

Did I mention that there's an ILX books of the 00s poll going on? I may have done. Voting closes Jan 11. You guys should all contribute - I'm in awe of some of the totals being racked up here.

39 in 09.

i wld imagine like 25 for 09? but i never thought of keeping a list before which i will do

3 in '10, so far

http://www.oralchelation.com/faq/images/oadmen.jpg

It would be smug to say I read about 200 books, but it's one of the few things I have to be smug about.

hopefully adding a book tracking application to my fb page will shame me into keeping up my reading

you guys who have finished books in '10 did you start them in '09 or something :(

Um, guilty - I finished Many Years From Now on New Year's Day, having started it on or around 30 September. I'm rattling through my next one though - almost a tenth of the way through already.

I started and completed 42 books in 2009, I started and am still reading 4. I feel that was quite a bit of reading for me, as I also take the International Herald Tribune and the NYRB. Of the books I started and read very slowly and have yet to complete, these are really big non-fiction works like Bertrand Russell's 'History of Western Philosophy', which are not meant to be read end-to-end in one prolonged effort. With stuff like that, I read a chapter, check it off in the table of contents, then come back in a few days or weeks and read another chapter. I plan on doing this for Manly P. Hall's 'Secret Teachings of All Ages' in 2010. This approach, of purposefully taking your time, also lends itself to longer works of fiction, which are enhanced by taking a month or more to read in many small, discrete sittings.

the individual chapters and hilariously long and dense tomes that come with studying philosophy hasn't really helped me here. (Who knows how much of 2010 I spent reading (not even nearly all of) The Phenomenology of Spirit ffs.) That and the internet, obv. Mostly the internet. I would guess that I read maybe only twenty full books last year. My eternal New Year's resolution is one novel every one to two weeks, along with the academia (and a lot more of the academia too - I should really be doing a book a week plus assorted tangents), but that's ruined by you lot being so interesting.

Although my academic count for 2010 is 1, and I hope to make the novel count the same by the end of the week, so the times they may be a becoming quite different.

i read 20 books this year, its usually less than that though.

I read about 30 or so books this year, with two of them being about a 1200pg, thus slowing me down. I keep a list of the stuff I read and it always surprises me how I don't read anything for a few weeks/months and then go through 5-6 books in a few days.

I don't count, though as with booze, disposal of empties is coming a logistical problem.