The French litterary magazine "Lire" stated that "intensive readers" are reading 50 books / year or one in a week. If you maintain this demanding rythm for 50 years, then you are able to read from age 25 to 75 not more than 2500 books. Conclusion : choose carefully and don't waste time with newspapers, magazines, televison or blogs ! : )

I counted for myself an average of 32 books a year, that is a bit better than one book every two weeks.

For me, this number depends on whether we are counting audio books. My commute to work is an hour one way and another hour coming home, so I usually fit a large number of books into my schedule.

I hadn't done the math before, but 2,500 books sounds so small compared to how many books there are in the world...Better get cracking!

I read between 130 and 200 books per year. The number varies depending on how many really long or difficult books I have read. Thus far this year, I have read 120 books. I don't listen to audiobooks often (only one this year and that was a reread of A Confederacy of Dunces.

How discouraging!

How discouraging?

#1 not #3. #3 is impressive!

Urania, if that is true, then I assume you do nothing else than read. 200 books is a book every one and a half day !! : )

Discouraging ? I'll make it worse !

If you spend some time studying what you read, linger over your texts to write reviews or if you reread regularly, if you have favourites book to which you go back again and again you are not even likely to reach 2000 books.

The time Americans spend reading books.
1996: 123 hours
2001: 109 hours
--Veronis, Suhler & Associates investment bankers
http://www.veronissuhler.com/

oy gevalt!

whats that poor -ious ? You speak Flemish now ?

funny reading :

http://www.parapublishing.com/sites/para...

According to my LibraryThing:

2006 - 58 (pro-rated)
2007 - 37 (I worked a lot of overtime that year)
2008 - 142 (started grad school!)
2009 - 151 so far; so, roughly 180 pro-rated to the end of the year!

How many does WAR AND PEACE count as? And 900 pagers. I don't count things like books of poetry by Jimmy Carter and love letters by "Dutch" Reagan, nope.

If you read The Bible that counts as 66 books.

It's awfully hard to put away the whole Bible in one year. I'm 65 and I haven't finished it yet.

Robert

"put away" the Bible. Interesting.

Ha! Don't you be puttin' away that Bible, Pore-E-Us!

Mr. Durick, this might help: http://www.librarything.com/work/930506

LOL, the bible for dummies !!

It reminds me of the Louvre. They have a speed visit program of 30 minutes : the 10 essentials and then off to your plane !

>7 Macumbeira,

Discouraging ? I'll make it worse !

If you spend some time studying what you read, linger over your texts to write reviews or if you reread regularly, if you have favourites book to which you go back again and again you are not even likely to reach 2000 books.

I am not sure I follow what you are trying to say. I do write reviews of books. I don't always post them on the reviews page; sometimes I post them on the thread to which they are appropriate. I don't review every book. Notes? It depends on the book and the context. If I am teaching a certain work, I will takes lots of notes and read background material as well. If I am reading a philosophy text, then copious notes. Rereading - I do reread. I usually have a Jane Austin or Barbara Pym fit at least twice a year. I hole up and read nothing but. I am a fast and close reader. I grew up in a home without television, so I read a lot. Do I do nothing but read? I have a huge garden to which I must attend and seven acres of land to maintain. I direct several reading groups in my community. I have goats to milk. I will probably add ducks next year. My husband and I are still working on our house. It is a perpetual work in progress. And I feel like I run a bed and breakfast because it seems like I always have company - many of whom are friends of friends who just show up. And I go to plays, dance performances, musical performances. I do have a life outside of books. If it helps, I was an English prof specializing in 16th- and 17th- century literature before I quit in fury. By default, I also taught 18th-century literature. I have read my whole life. So what's discouraging about all that?

Mac is referring back to the original post. The assumption that we'll only get around to ~2500 books in a lifetime = discouraging, and then the # is further reduced if one rereads etc.

I probably make it through about 60-70 books a year--that's pleasure reading and doesn't include my academic work. I don't think I'll make it through quite as many this year, but my reading list over the last year includes In Search of Lost Time, Les Miserables, most of E.M. Forster's fiction, and four of Jane Austen's novels (two of them rereads). I can be happy with that.

Well, what does it mean to read a book?

If I get to include all the half books, quarter books, books only really worth a short skim that got more than that, gospel readings at Mass (I like having father read aloud to me), audio books left playing while I slept, etc., plays I've watched that I could have read, video renditions of such plays (i.e., "moving pictures"), etc., etc. I'm sure I could come up with a fairly impressive number. A number with more steriods than urania's.

If I'm counting worthy books where I've read every word with all the rapt attention each word deserves, never succumbing to skip ahead to get to the juicy parts, never fading in the midst of some rich abundunce of melifluidity, well, I've never successfully read a single one, try though I might.

So, my answer is 0 to 1,000, though why don't we just say 50 for purposes of the poll.

Message edited by its author, Oct 25, 2009, 12:43pm.

A little break from the grind of all those books

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQFKtI6gn...

Past few years I've been getting about 90-110. It is discouraging thinking about how many books there are in the world one wants to read before dying, and the number is increasing dramatically every year. (For some. Me.)

Doesn't quality matter more than quantity? I know of some people who power through about twenty Mills & Boon books in a few weeks. I'd rather spend a whole year reading War and Peace (which I haven't yet read btw) than read large piles of trash.

And then again, I'd rather be that person reading all the Mills & Boon than someone who labours through, say, The Name of the Rose without enjoying or understanding a word of it, just because they think they should. (I actually mostly enjoyed what I could understand of Name of the Rose by the way, but I did find it awfully dense and difficult.)

So, surely what matters is what you read, not how much. Though, I get your point about how much really good stuff there is out there that one misses simply by not living long enough.

Just trying to make everyone feel better... and not succeeding very well...

A poem by Frost may be here comforting

NEITHER OUT FAR NOR IN DEEP

The people along the sand
All turn and look one way.
They turn their back on the land.
They look at the sea all day.

As long as it take to pass
A ship keeps raising its hull;
The wetter ground like glass
Reflects a standing gull.

The land may vary more.
But whether the truth may be -
The water comes ashore,
And the people look at the sea.

They cannot look out far.
They cannot look in deep.
But when was that ever a bar
To any watch they keep?

ChocolateMuse, I am with you a million thousand percent. Folks all be doing these 50-and 75- and 100-book challenges, and if that starts to be your guiding principle, you know it's just gonna be a matter of time before it's all Goodnight Moon and Wizard of Id. But it's still interesting in a weird stats-analysis way--like, looking at my books per year, I see how they dip when I get a stress job with too much evenings and weekends, shoot up stratospherically when I enter grad school, and then shoot up even more now that I'm visiting home a lot and reading with my niece (a lot of mine are kids' books, yes:)

yes, I kind of agree as well. Reading slowly and thoughtfully one major book for a period of a few months is more important than just rushing through to achieve some number challenge. but, you know if that works for you, then go for it. There are some periods, where I think, christ, got to hurry up read more! I think with a bit of discipline one can read fast and closely as Urania says.

I don't feel that there are more books being written that I want to read, mercifully, but I do keep discovering old books that I'm desperate to read before I run out of time. I mean, I still haven't read Gibbon, any Richardson, or much Thomas Mann, or Marx. Dammit.

it also depends what one means by a book. a lot of my reading is Russian tales often with three or four in one volume. I count those as one book each, or one work. I also don't include all the poetry I dip in and out of every day:

2007: 42
2008: 79
2009: 54

but given the finite length of our days, and the number of books I really want to read, and I think are worth my time, it's definitely discouraging.

O Mackie, pass the bottle!

Message edited by its author, Oct 26, 2009, 9:51am.

I think there can be some compromise between quantity and quality. I started doing a 50 book challenge this year just to force myself to start reading more regularly. After graduating college I thought I'd never pick up a book again...but the challenge has helped kick my book reading passion back to life.

So, while setting a goal of how many books to read a year might sound as if you're doing it for the wrong reasons, it may actually help you to find more to get interested in. And that is when the quality starts to kick in.

I just hit 70 75 (rather) this year, but I also read/count text-heavy magazines (literary and computer security), and I count Omnibus volumes as one book.

I've been keeping track of it since ~2006: http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0...

Message edited by its author, Oct 26, 2009, 12:48pm.

I'm somewhere in the 40-60 books-per-year range, not including poetry, periodicals and short stories. I read far too many magazines, journals and newspapers, a habit I picked up during my former work life out of necessity, and one which I can't seem to break.

I spend too much time on the Internet:/ Like just now, I'm all reading the Aeneid, and I put the book down to pop onto Wikipedia and remind myself about what Sarpedon's whole story was, and now it's an hour later.

Tomcat, I just found one Jameson bottle under the coach. Let's share it. Best whiskey in the world ..... Do you hear that Scots ?......

Tomcat and theaelizabet, you confirm that good reader's manage 50 books a year. Urania lives on a planet where days count 48 hours and years 752 days : Uranus !!!!!
No seriously, Urania I think you read the thinnest books in the world to reach these numbers. Like euh....

- German jokes ?
- Italian war-heroes ?
- Dutch cooking ?

Cowboy.... An excell document keeping track of what you have been reading... uh I dunno... but do you want a swig of the bottle too ?

Message edited by its author, Oct 26, 2009, 2:38pm.

>32.

Thanks for the offer. But I limit my liquid intake to water, tea, juice, and ginger beer.

(EDIT: Mistook my but for a by)

Message edited by its author, Oct 26, 2009, 3:45pm.

I do not read nearly enough.

It's shameful, in fact. Damned distractions!

I just went out of my way to count, and so far this year is looking like I'll have read much less than the past few. It's @ 65 currently, not counting the comics--which I only recently got into, boosting the # up to like 106 or whatever it's at. I've been slowing down in order to study about half the books I've been reading in the past few months, reading a ton of articles on them, whatever.

I don't measure myself by the number of books I read versus what books someone else reads. We all have different tastes and desires regarding making our reading a study. What is discouraging is thinking about how many books you'd like to read are out there (finite but ever increasing) versus how many you will read if you are lucky enough to live out a fairly normal healthy lifespan (finite and ever decreasing). But you won't be around to regret what you haven't read after you have passed on. You can only do what you can do. Rather than become discouraged, it may lead you to re-prioritize your time (and reading material!) a bit.

Books help you to a better understanding. Too many? too few? It's difficult to say. All I know is: if I pick up OUR MUTUAL FRIEND tonight I will be in good hands.

Message edited by its author, Oct 26, 2009, 9:25pm.

24 & 28> well said

32> stop insulting urania#1!

34> I'm with you on that!

36> well said

Excluding salon reads, I've completed 17 books this year. I'll probably have 20 done by year's end. Typical year for me is one or two books completed per month. I'll usually begin about the same amount of books but not complete them. I'm lucky to finish half of what I begin.

Message edited by its author, Oct 26, 2009, 7:37pm.

>32 The last book I finished was 528 pages: The Hakawati -not on Oprah's recommendations list A_musing. I am currently halfway through Effie Briest (256 pages) - a novel considered by Thomas Mann to be one on the six best German novels written. Again not an Oprah recommendation. I recently finished The Kindly Ones. I also read novellas, science fiction, YA adult literature, philosophy, history, literary criticism. Satisfied? Or is there some other criterian needed to qualify me as a serious reader and not a stupid reader of romance novels and trash fiction. So back off!

Message edited by its author, Oct 26, 2009, 8:30pm.

For the past 26 years or so--the period during which I tracked my reading more or less faithfully--I've been averaging 100-300 books a year. I think the real tragedy is that we can't remember everything we read. Even the books I read with greatest care, as in school, for instance, books I wrote lengthy essays on, analysed to death, have not only faded from my memory, but I can't even be sure that what I'm remembering isn't simply an artifact, or a frozen memento of the ancient person I was then, without any connexion to what my opinion would be if I were to read the book again, now.

Although I read voraciously, I can understand that people could spend a lifetime rereading only a few favourites. It could be that I can't stop and reread (as I used to do as a child) because I'm afraid of witnessing, more than I do already, the eternal change of everything I once observed, noticed, realised, thought. I don't know whether most people experience it so dramatically, but I at least feel as if I died a dozen times already, so great are the differences between the succession of readers (to stick to this one function) who inhabited "me".

On the practical side of reading so many (or few) books in a year, it's noteworthy that I'm not engaged in raising a child, taking daily care of anyone beyond myself, do not have other time-consuming hobbies, and have never owned a television. I watch movies on my computer occasionally, I used to frequent cinema assiduously, but even at the time of my most hectic existence, when I worked ten hour+ days, had subscriptions to the opera, several concert series, two cinematheques, and dated like a hare in March, I still read some 2-3 hours a day. There were times when I used to get up as early as possible, around five (and I loooove sleeping!) or so, just to squeeze in a couple hours quiet reading time before the preparations for work.

Message edited by its author, Oct 26, 2009, 9:18pm.

Let's agree to disagree about the contents and subject matter in our books. As to the amount consumed or how high-serious they are? An activity too fatuous to occupy our attentions here. I should think that there is much to keep us busy without the snooting at each others lists.
Makes me think of all the fake books and fake titles on the shelves at Gadshill. When did Dickens get the time to read so many books each year? He was much too busy writing, editing, walking, performing, not to mention 10 children and all the other characters that he surrounded himself with. We all have our own books to bear, let us bear them gracefully.

39> The Kindly Ones is 983 pages long to boot, no less!

I admire those of you able to read into triple digits amounts. I wish I could. Since I can't read triple digit amounts each month, I typically acquire triple digits amounts each month (for the day when I can read 100+/month) is how I rationalize the compulsion

For me it's not so much a matter of time as it is of easy distractibility. Not just the constant kid-noise (and wife-noise too damnit!) in the house (just kidding, those are "good" things), or stupid cell phones going off when I'm trying to read at lunch (those are bad things), assuming I get a lunch (but I'm not whining, just leave me alone, People!), but being able to just focus on one particular thing in front of me (a book, say) for any amount of real time has always been a real challenge for me...except when the book completely grabs me and takes me away like I've been kidnapped and closeted in some mysteriously evocative pandora's box of wonders, which has happened to me only four times this year: The Road, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, The Sea Came in at Midnight, and Last Vanities.

I'd add The Master and Margarita but that book is so complex as to elicit distractions (in a good way) while you stop and reference whatever you're referencing means or alludes to, and while doing that, I'd get distracted and probably, somehow, end up on LibraryThing!...seeing, perhaps, if somebody had answered my question already but then seeing that maybe I had a message or there was some interesting thread going on, check that out and forget the reference that brought me to LT in the first place and ultimately not have accomplished much by way of actual reading. See what I mean?

Ah well.

Getting to be November. More Frost on the way.

I COULD GIVE ALL TO TIME

To Time it never seems that he is brave
To set himself against the peaks of snow
To lay them level with the running wave,
Nor is he overjoyed when they lie low,
But only grave, contemplative and grave.

What now is inland shall be ocean isle,
Then eddies playing round a sunken reef
Like the curl at the corner of a smile;
And I could share Time's lack of joy or grief
At such a planetary change of style.

I could give all to Time except - except
What I myself have held. But why declare
The things forbidden that while Customs slept
I have crossed to Safety with? For I am There,
And what I would not part with I have kept.

from A WITNESS TREE 1942

Message edited by its author, Oct 27, 2009, 12:28am.

>44

Thanks Porius. A lovely poem.

Lola, I know exactly what you mean (it's only one of the many meanings of my lj name), but . . . am I understanding that you experience it as a negative? To me it's just one of the glorious things about reading--revisiting books shows you a new mirror on yourselves, the glorious cavalcade of new yous being born.

'Swhy I do a bunch of notes on each book in my lj when I read it. Very excited to compare, e.g. Brothers Karamazov 2007 with Brothers Karamazov 2033.

Very excited to compare, e.g. Brothers Karamazov 2007 with Brothers Karamazov 2033.

>46 You're in for a shock.

I think that the personal reading stats are useless, unless it is useful for something (we are not in a competition over who reads more than the others). Now, let's see the dropping reading rates in schools, then we can do something about it.

>47 Tell me more.

O no. No spoilers here ;-) That would be cheating.

Martin--no, I wouldn't call it negative, it's probably, in sum, gaining in wisdom. But it is a disturbance, something upsetting, sometimes even revolutionary, and like any such situation requires stamina and energy to deal with... and perhaps optimism, an immunity to hopelessness and fear that anything we think or feel in any given moment of our lives is false, fake, untrue, because it is transitory.

Well said, Lola.

*purrr... rrr... rrr...*

My goal is 120 books a year. I made that last year though I wasn't consciously trying until December, lol. Right now I'm at 85 regular books and 22 audiobooks on the year... 107 total. I'll make my goal but I would love to have the audiobooks as a bonus rather than part of that number. Ah well.

Lola: Let a thousand flowers bloom! And wane, and perish, and die, all within the same person and the same life--and bloom again. Well said indeed.

Birthday of Dylan Thomas today. Let us have a wake. Perhaps a whisky in his honor:

Not for the proud man apart
From the raging moon I write
On these spindrift pages
Nor for the towering dead
With their nightingales and psalms
But for the lovers, their arms
Round the griefs of the ages,
Who pay no praise or wages
Nor heed my craft or art.

IF I WERE TICKLED BY THE RUB OF LOVE

If I were tickled by the rub of love,
A rooking girl who stole me for her side,
Broke through the straws, breaking my bandaged string,
If the red tickle as the cattle calve
Still set to scratch a laughter from my lung,
I would not fear the apple nor the flood
Nor the bad blood of spring.

Shall it be male or female? say the cells,
And drop the plum like fire from the flesh,
If I were tickled by the hatching hair,
The winging bone that sprouted in the heels,
The itch of man upon the baby's thigh,
I would not fear the gallows nor the axe
Nor the crossed sticks of war.

Shall it be male or female? say the fingers
That chalk the walls with green girls and their men.
I would not fear the muscling-in of love
If I were tickled by the urchin hungers
Rehearsing heat upon a raw-edged nerve.
I would not fear the devil in the loin
Nor the outspoken grave.

When I was a windy boy and a bit
and the black spit of the chapel fold
(cried the old ram rod, dying of women)
I tiptoed shy in the gooseberry wood
The rude owl cried like a tell-tale tit,
I skipped in a blush as the big girls rolled
nine-pin down on donkey's common,
And on seesaw Sunday night's I wooed
whoever I would with my wicked eyes.
The whole of the moon I could love and leave
all the green-leaved little weddings wives
in the coal-black bush and let them grieve.

When I was a gusty man and a half
and the black beast of the beetles pews
(cried the old ram rod, dying of bitches)
not a boy and a bit in the wick --
Dipping moon and drunk as a new dropped calf,
I whistled all night in the twisted flues,
Midwives grew in the midnight ditches,
And the sizzling sheets of the town cried, Quick! --
Whenever I dove in a breast high shoal,
Wherever I ramped in the clover quilts,
Whatsoever I did in the coal --
Black night, I left my quivering prints.

When I was a man you could call a man
And the black cross of the holy house,
(Sighed the old ram rod, dying of welcome),
Brandy and ripe in my bright, bass prime,
No springtailed tom in the red hot town
With every simmering woman his mouse
But a hillocky bull in the swelter
Of summer come in his great good time
To the sultry, biding herds, I said,
Oh, time enough when the blood runs cold,
And I lie down but to sleep in bed,
For my sulking, skulking, coal-black soul!

When I was half the man I was
And serve me right as the preachers warn,
(Sighed the old ram rod, dying of downfall),
No flailing calf or cat in a flame
Or hickory bull in milky grass
But a black sheep with a crumpled horn,
At last the soul from its foul mousehole
Slunk pouting out when the limp time came;
And I gave my soul a blind, slashed eye,
Gristle and rind, and a roarers' life,
And I shoved it into the coal black sky
To find a woman's soul for a wife.

Now I am a man no more no more
And a black reward for a roaring life,
(Sighed the old ram rod, dying of strangers),
Tidy and cursed in my dove cooed room
I lie down thin and hear the good bells jaw --
For, oh, my soul found a sunday wife
In the coal black sky and she bore angels!
Harpies around me out of her womb!
Chastity prays for me, piety sings,
Innocence sweetens my last black breath,
Modesty hides my thighs in her wings,
And all the deadly virtues plague my death!

'Lament', my favourite DT poem

(wish something would hide my thighs)

Nice poetry people.
I read on an average 175-225 books per year.
And that truly doesn't seem like a huge lot to me. I don't "try" to read high numbers of books, I just read what seems to be interesting or challenging to me. But growing up with no TV, reading and conversing was all we had. So I read. Conversing brought attention to you, attention brought violence and ugliness your way. So I stayed safe and I read. A lot!~! Still do.
The only pressure I ever feel from my books is when I am in a group read and feel over my head and have to research as I read. But I know that is good for me so I don't worry about that kind of pressure.
Right now I am reading War and Peace, Life and Fate and The Adventures of Elizabeth in Rugen. I just finished Vanity Fair, People of the Book and Elizabeth and Her German Garden. So I read some that are work for me and also lighter fare. I enjoy a good mix.
Also I don't watch television except for 2 shows per week and I don't read magazines or newspapers. I do read the Bible through almost every 2 or 3 years.
I will admit that most of the books you folks in this group read, I have never heard of, but by being in the group, joining in the group reads and reading/listening to your discussions and comments, I hope and intend to learn a great deal.
most humbly,
belva

Message edited by its author, Nov 13, 2009, 6:56pm.

Wow, nanny,

War and Peace and Life and Fate...together?...simultaneously?

Impressive. Nice companions actually, as, if I recall, Grossman's epic has been called a 20th century War & Peace by critics who must make comparisons.

What are the 2 shows you watch?

Yeah, I know. They are both group reads and Life and Fate was supposed to be before Vanity Fair (though I was already reading War and Peace but my Vanity Fair arrived first so I just switched the order of the read for myself. (I know, I know----do that on here and die!~!)
You will probably roll your eyes, say "wow" and exit the room but the only 2 shows I watch are "House" and "NCIS".
belva

I only watch one - Survivor!

I used to watch House religiously. NCIS occasionally. I watched the first three seasons of Survivor, then quit. I don't watch much TV these days, unless you count The Wiggles or Spy Kids as TV, though when the 4th quarter of Laker games rolls around, you know I'm there.

I am another "House" fan. Oh Gregory House...be still my heart!

I am so jealous, especially of nannybette and that astronomical muse, urania!

If I knock out 35 books a year, with commuter-fueled audiobooks, I'm doing well.

That makes my TBR pile about 15 years long.

>#64:
Marie;
I know!~! Part of it is those baby blues and somehow his sarcastic and sadistic wit is sexy. I would "dark alley" do him in a heartbeat!~!
belva

#21 (A musing): "Well, what does it mean to read a book?"

For me, in my (somewhat) money-making role as a copy editor, there's reading a book to understand it while editing (and styling) it (these are manuscripots, actually, already accepted for publication by the various publishers in my freelance stable), and then there's reading a book for so-called pleasure or elucidation.

The former often makes it difficult to do the latter, since as an editor I'm involved in the book in a deeper way, or at least a more "holistic" way. When I try to do the other, more commonplace (and theoretically more rewarding) "reading," it's often frustrating, accentuating the alienation that is my bete noire--my year-round cabin fever state--which that reading should be the antidote for. So I usually read things, when I'm not editing, that don't call for involvement: newspaper and magazine articles on factual subjects--politics, popular culture, sports, economics ... but that are more easily put aside or forgotten shortly afterward, certainly not equivalent to the thoughtfulness engendered by a good, or challenging, book.

Message edited by its author, Nov 25, 2009, 4:53pm.