How many books are you reading per annum?

I just reckoned on what I have averaged in reading over the past 6 years, since I started to tally my reading.

On average 32 every year. https://sites.google.com/site/meraciousincunabulum/Home/books-read-so-far

Now, I did do a Masters Degree over two years during that time where my average is down quite a bit, but hope to pick this up again and get back to my goal of 50 a year.

Some thinner ones and thicker ones in there but on the whole it has been an eclectic read which on the whole I have enjoyed.

Does anyone else have a long term goal in books read? If so how many are you reading a year?

Between 1980 and 1990, as a teenager, I used to read an average of 30 books a year, a number that fell to as low as 13 in my first year at college. At grad school, and during the first years working, I was able to raise that to about 50 per year, with occasional very good years, of reading over 80 books, between 1991 and 2000. Since then, I have continued reading around 80 books per year, but over the past two years I have set myself higher targets. In 2010, I read 126 books, 2011 178 and last year, I read 156 books (in December I was exceptionally busy with work, and wasn't able to finish 10 books which were in progress). In addition to reading more books, I also write reviews for each. I keep statistics on my reading since 1981, and the average number of pages per book is 250, although I haven't checked this for the past 10 years. After 1998, I specifically made up my mind that I should not only read more books, but also read thicker books (include more tomes).

> 2

I bow before you. I am inspired and dumb struck simultaneously! Great work.

I made a graph at the end of last year :) http://www.librarything.nl/pic/3661512
Totals:
2009 = 176
2010 = 120
2011 = 116
2012 = 231

In the last 15 years or so, I've varied between a low of 92 books finished in one year, to a high of 171. (Mind you, not all of those books are remotely what you might consider "substantial.") That's a large enough number that I certainly don't feel I need to set any kind of goal about reading more books, but I am making an effort to read more of my older books... I have books that have been sitting on the TBR pile for the better part of two decades, constantly being pre-empted in favor of newer, shinier volumes, and that just seems wrong.

> 4, 5

Amazing. Way beyond anything I could possibly hope to read!

It depends on what you call books. I read comics collections, Graphic novels, children books and standalone novellas - and these are boosting the numbers a bit.

But in the last years, I had been averaging 40 novels, 20 non fiction and 20 collections/anthologies per year (and that does not include online stories reading (the years I counted these, I read ~600, half of them being Flash fiction (

2, 4, 5>I echo Halicarnassus...cue up Wayne's World, I'm not worthy!!!

I've read an average of 34 books over the last 5 years, with a high of 47 in 2009 and only 25 in 2010. In answering the question it made me think about why the peak in 2009 and the low point in 2010, so I looked at those two years. I did a category challenge in 2009, and read my first graphic novels, so that certainly contributed to reading more books. I also read all of the Harry Potter books for the first time in 2009, and I raced through them, going faster and faster.

In 2010, my company was going through turmoil, and some of that undoubtedly affected me. I also noted that I read 4 Early Reviewer books, only one of which I liked very much. And tackled 3 relatively weighty biographies, and I always read non-fiction slower than fiction.

Interesting to think about!

I didn't start tracking my reading until 2008.

2008 - 46 books
2009 - 52 (the year I joined LT)
2010 - 30 (the year I had my first child)
2011 - 79
2012 - 77

I expect 2013 to be about the same as 2010 since I'm expecting my second child in February.

I started counting in 2009 when I joined online reading sites and opened my blog.

2009 - 48 books
2010 - 80
2011 - 63
2012 - 84

This year, I foresee a lower count than last year's as I may tackle some tomey tome tomes.

>8 LisaMorr:
In answering the question it made me think about why the peak in 2009 and the low point in 2010, so I looked at those two years.

That's interesting. After reading your post I looked back at 2007, the year I started logging and I read among others...

Clarissa - Samuel Richardson

War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

These are pretty large tomes I suppose and would be well above average in word count.

I started keeping track in 2008.

2008 70
2009 87
2010 101
2011 97
2012 107

I think I definitely started reading more books since joining LT, but there are other reasons for this variation. 2008 was a very busy stressful year for me, and so was part of 2009, so I had less time for reading. Length of book and ease of reading also play a role; last year was also a stressful year and I read a lot of shorter, easy-to-read books, mixing them up with longer more difficult ones. I don't really focus on numbers but it's interesting to think about what influences my reading.

> 12

rebecca: just read your thread on Club Read 2013 and your reading prowess is inspiring: how you manage to read 107 books in a stressful year is beyond me! Well done.

Last year has to be my lowest total of books read cover to cover since I can remember. 38 books, I think, plus a lot of "selections from". Still, it was a rough year for reading.

Hmm. In 2008 I read 100 books. I was a member of the first 75 book group challenge that year and also doing research which required a lot of reading. I abhorred the whole idea of reading to achieve a numerical goal—for me personally, and was dumbfounded to see people reading juvenile books or short books to just achieve a number (and being applauded for it).

My philosophy on LT has always been that if I can't find what I want, I will create it. So I created Club Read in '09. I wanted a place where the emphasis was taken off quantity (at least from the group focus) and where reading wasn't only quantified by books read cover to cover.* In addition to books read cover to cover, I do a large amount of reading dipping in and out of poetry, various nonfiction, fiction collections, magazines, some online nonfiction...etc. I stopped numbering my lists of book read and started listing "selections from..."

So, back to your question (now that I have had my digression). Most years I read around 60 - 75 books cover to cover.

*There were a lot of other things I was looking for and it was an interesting experiment as to how to make it happen. We owe a lot to a great gathering of readers who made it all happen. And I'm really pleased to see that CR has retained its original character over the years and so many have stayed with it.

PS: I love the threads here where people talk about books & other things they read, or films and plays they see, lectures they go to, classes they take...etc. janepriceestrada talks about magazine articles she read, jargoneer about lectures and all kinds of cultural events, torontoc about films from the Toronto film festival...etc. to name a few. But I digress again...

>10 Rise: tomey tome tomes. So funny! I have at least one of those I'd like to get to this year.

#13 Halicarnassus That total includes 13 Inspector Montalbano mysteries by Camilleri, as well as many other shorter, highly readable books that fell outside my usual long, grim, difficult reading!

> 14 I abhorred the whole idea of reading to achieve a numerical goal—for me personally, and was dumbfounded to see people reading juvenile books or short books to just achieve a number (and being applauded for it).

Yes, I am in complete agreement with you here and to my horror I have begun to worry about how many I have read, which is ironic considering what I posted in #11.

I suppose one of my aims is still to make myself read as much as I can but not in any superficial way of clocking up 'reads': as you say that is easy with juvenile literature and so thoroughly pointless. Still, I think an external yardstick can be good and I wonder how many in those 75 book group kind of clubs would be so willing to take on a word count instead? For example those 3 long novels I mentioned in #11 above must have around 2,000,000 words between them. If the average length of a novel is say 100,000 words then that's on average around 20 novels worth. Yes and so, this whole things is rather otiose and it for me it detracts from the enjoyment of reading and I find myself tempted to scrap my little list, only to restrain myself and consider it a trivial history of my reading over the last few years.

Edit

I had a look around and with genuine respect for the OP in this thread here http://www.librarything.com/topic/130576#3742894
in more general terms listing books with 400 words in it or the like for me turns the while thing into a pointless exercise.

>17 LesMiserables: Hal, I should qualify my comments. I have always been a voracious reader and never have needed to encourage myself to read more. And I'm fairly content these days with what I read, too, so I don't feel the need to 'should' all over myself there either. And I do understand that some people function better with a goal to focus on, or need a tool to push themselves. To each their own. I just didn't want to be in a place where the whole group was focused that way (even if all the individuals weren't). So individuals in Club Read do what they want here, but the group isn't under a quantitative umbrella.

Yeah, if you're counting, I'd give yourself 3 book points for each of those tomes in #11. ;-)

Halicarnassus, the word count idea is a good one (although I would not want the competitive spirits among us to have another challenge), but some books are simply harder than others. I can read a long crime novel in a few days and it can take me weeks to read a book of poetry. A book by James Joyce simply takes more to read than one by Dan Brown. I was a proofreader for several years and every reorganization there was talk of measuring output by number of pages read. Of course some pages could be read in a few minutes and others would take an hour to do properly, so this idea was always eventually discarded until the next joyful reorganization.

In 2010 and 2011, I read 125 and 127 books, respectively. Last year, I decided to stop counting and read more challenging books and to not avoid longer books if they appealed to me. I read 97 books, but Moby Dick and The Gormenghast Trilogy were among them. I've started this year with Lolita and Infinite Jest. I suppose I'll read fewer than last year.

17> I echo your thoughts, I want to make sure that I am reading a lot and watching less crap TV, surfing the net (LT threads about great books to read excluded), playing video/PC games. So for me, having a general reading target out there can remind me to get back to the "good stuff".

I have seen a lot of folks track pages read, but I haven't yet come across words read. Certainly that's another option.

It's not like very many of us are analytical or into tracking or lists or anything, right? ;-D

14> I also have been enjoying the many different directions the threads take here. It's all good!

edited to add:
19> Very good point. Reading just to turn pages and finish is not what we should be doing. I always read non-fiction slower than fiction, I get more out of it that way. What would be the point in blazing through it.

> novel size

100,000 words is about 100 pages; I would say an average novel has 250, so 250,000 words.

Word count can be a bit confusing; I suggest you look at page count.

However, focusing on word count or page count pushes the issue more in the direction of quantity, rather than quality.

Another consideration, is whether we should look at reading books or reading works. Ever since the 19th century, book editions often combine a number of shorter works. Sometimes these shorter works were originally published separately, and sometimes they weren't. I think that there is a trend in publishing to publish thinner books, each major publisher has a series or imprint that publishes books at a size of around 100 pages. However, many of these small books actually consist of first class world literature.

I think it is not useful to steer the focus of this thread to what people read. For many people, reading YA or even classic children's stories can be very rewarding. The positive effect of the reading groups and targets will be that people read more.

>20 LisaMorr: It is all good! Variety is the spice of life, so they say.

> 21

I actually thought I was being a bit generous with the 100k average novels size! I would say it is less.

Alan Paton Cry, the Beloved Country 83,774
Alice Walker The Color Purple 66,556
Amy Tan The Kitchen God’s Wife 159,276
Amy Tan Joy Luck Club 91,419
Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged 561,996
Ayn Rand The Fountainhead 311,596
Betty Smith A Tree Grows in Brooklyn 145,092
Charles Dickens A Tale of Two Cities 135,420
Daniel Defoe Moll Flanders 138,087
Emily Bronte Wuthering Heights 107,945
Erich Remarque All Quiet on the Western Front 61,922
Ernest Hemingway The Sun Also Rises 67,707
Frank Norris McTeague 112,737
Fyodor Dostoyevsky Crime and Punishment 211,591
George Eliot Middlemarch 316,059
George Orwell Nineteen Eighty-Four 88,942
Harper Lee To Kill A Mockingbird 99,121
Harriet Beecher Stowe Uncle Tom’s Cabin 166,622
Henry David Thoreau Walden 114,634
Honore de Balzac Pere Goriot 87,846
J.D. Salinger The Catcher in the Rye 73,404
James Fenimore Cooper Last of the Mohicans 145,469
Jane Austen Persuasion 87,978
John Knowles A Separate Peace 56,787
John Steinback The Grapes of Wrath 169,481
John Steinback East of Eden 225,395
Joseph Heller Catch-22 174,269
Kurt Vonnegut Slaughterhouse-Five 49,459
Kurt Vonnegut Welcome to the Monkey House 99,560
Leo Tolstoy War and Peace 587,287
Margaret Atwood Alias Grace 157,665
Mark Twain The Adventures of Huck Finn 109,571
Mark Twain Life on the Mississippi 127,776
Maxine Hong Kingston Woman Warrior 70,957
Milan Kundera The Unbearable Lightness of Being 85,199
Nathaniel Hawthorne The Scarlet Letter 63,604
Oscar Wilde The Picture of Dorian Gray 78,462
Ray Bradbury Fahrenheit 451 46,118
Ray Bradbury The Martian Chronicles 64,768
Toni Morrison Song of Solomon 92,400
Virginia Woolf Mrs. Dalloway 63,422
William Faulkner As I Lay Dying 56,695
William Golding Lord of the Flies 59,900

>23 LesMiserables:

Interesting statistics!

My long-term average (30 years of reading), setting off number of pages against number of books, is an average of 250 pages per book I read.

It means I read a lot of tomes ;-)

>14 avaland:,17,18

I joined one of the reading challenges this year. It's the category one.

I was initially going to leave open slots in order to add in books that people were discussing. In the planning phase, things got out of hand and I ended up making a complete list of things I would read in an ideal year of reading. This gave me 100 books which is about twice as many as I would realistically be able to read.

I have not experienced reading from this list as being forced to do anything. I've actually experienced it as liberating. To be sure, my approach is not to think in terms of completing the list but rather in terms of having a guide to channel my reading. I'm also seeing it as more of a two year plan. Maybe it's not the list as such but the approach that makes a difference.

As to the character of the groups, when I first contemplated participating I didn't spend much time reading the previous threads. I just thought "neat idea" and assumed there would be some people "like me" around. Boy was I wrong.

First, I'm struck by how little of what I would call disussion there is. I thought the way it would work is that one person would read a book, give their thoughts and then other people would respond at that level. That does not appear to be what is happening. So far what I'm seeing is 1/3 capsule reviews, 1/3 "yes I like that too" type comments and 1/3 water cooler discussion. Many of the reviews are well done and the other comments are entertaining. I'm just genuinely surprised that there is not more delving into the texts that are being read.

Second, I'm fascinated by how similiar the threads are. I expected to see a reasonable cross section of different types of readers. As I started reading the threads, I couldn't help but think are there this many people reading YA literature? Really? Fantasy and dsytopian literature. Same thing. Why so much? This is why avaland's comments really struck a chord with me.

To be sure, I agree with edwinbcn. The point is to flourish. From this perspective, I don't think there is such thing as doing it wrong. So I'm not criticizing what people are doing. Again, I'm just genuinely surprised about how mistaken my assumptions were.

> how little of what I would call disussion there is

In my opinion, in-depth discussion of literature works very well in a face-to-face setting; but written communication is too laborious and often misunderstood. Sharing views and addition, seems the main mode.

I started with the list of books I'd read first to see how many books I actually read in a year, so when I count the books on my TBR pile I can say "I could finish it in (certain period of time)". Or when looking at the amount of books I have, I can say "I can read all my books in (certain number of years)". It also turned out to be useful for quickly looking up my older book reviews and looking up titles of books I've read and not reviewed (and not added to LT, as I only add books I have and want to keep).
And then numbering is easy. But my main goal is not "read certain number of books", but "finish TBR pile". And if I coun the books on that, I could finish it within this year :P Which is good because then I'll start re-reading books from my bookcases to see if I want to keep them or not (though now I have a good source of free books where I can drop off books and take other ones with me for free, I can see my TBR pile growing again XD Which is why I do want to make some space in my bookcase too :P).

Amazon used to provide a book’s word count, readability stats, relative ranking re other books in terms of length and readability, etc. -- very fun data that I really miss. I remember noting that Infinite Jest = half a million words. Novels are "usually" 80-100K.

Because fonts and formatting vary so much, you can grossly estimate word count by counting the number of words per line (count several lines to get a more representative feel), then multiplying that by the number of lines on a page and then by the number of pages in the book. If there’s a lot of dialogue/white space, round down; if the text is dense, round up. I just did this with Mrs Dalloway and got 62,856 -- very close to Halicarnassus’s 63,422 in msg23.

-----
On the general topic: Until 8-10 years ago, I read ~40 books/year and wanted to read more. By paying more respect to my reading -- doing so in a quieter area; reading when I’m alert not sleepy -- I’ve doubled that and more. But in general, I’m such a goal-oriented person that whatever I can do to emphasize the journey of reading over the finishing of a book is a good thing for me.

28 -
My problem is that I pay too much respect to reading. I want so much to dedicate time to a book that unless I read 100 pages in one sitting I feel like I didn't do my job as a reader. So I'll go weeks until I find that 100-page sitting mood. It's a weird thing, I know.

To answer the original question, I only read 13 or so books a year. In 2006 I read 20 but that's because I had just moved to Argentina, didn't know anyone for three months, so I filled those first few months with books. Plus I was reading as much in Spanish to serve as a refresher.

I'd like to average 20 a year as I do know how to read 2 books a month but I just get too distracted too easily. And then, that "respect" thing.

My first book though this year is a 1000 page behemoth (large hardback, small print) so that always feels good.

I like keeping track because I like lists. I think I also started keeping track because it meant I finished some books--there were years and years when I would read 3/4 of a book and then put it aside and never get back to it. So I started writing down when I actually finished one. Now I never abandon books at the three-quarter mark--either much earlier, or not at all.

I find that a lot of the counting and listing groups don't have quality discussion, and that's why I hang out at ClubRead. As long as I know I'm reading, I don't care how many I actually read. The number can be rather meaningless--200 romance novels, 100 best sellers, 50 literary books, War and Peace, Moby Dick--when we talk numbers we're never comparing apples and apples.

I usually read between 65 - 85 books a year--depending on how many long ones I took on. I read MORE when I was at university because I had so much course reading, and then on my breaks I'd want to read all that stuff I'd put aside during the term. One of those years I read over 100 books.

#1 Does anyone else have a long term goal in books read?

Why, yes: I plan to read ALL the books.

I only know how many I read each year because I started using the LT collections feature to keep track of when I read books: I have collections "Read in 2009," "Read in 2010," etc. The number itself isn't important to me, but I find it interesting to know when I read a particular book and what books I was reading when different things were going on in my life. However, as an artifact of this, I know how many books I read.

>31 AsYouKnow_Bob:: Heh. Me, too. That's even my stated goal in my thread name. :)

>32 rebeccanyc:: I tag mine with the year read, and also note the date I finished them. Mostly just because I find it interesting to keep track, and rather warmly fulfilling to pull up a page on LT and look back over a full year's reading. (Before LT, I kept track on paper, but that was less fun.) Funnily enough, I'm often very good about remembering what I was reading when some significant thing or other was going on in my life, but very bad about remembering dates or even years when things happened. More than once, I've actually consulted the "finished on" date of whatever book I was reading at the time to figure out exactly when that time was.

That's interesting. Historically, learned men and women often corresponded by letter in the most analytical manner, the letter being a medium that allowed the correspondents to think and reflect before committing an answer.

>25 March-Hare: Any discussion is of course facilitated if readers are reading the same book. Though, I think here in CR it seems readers sometimes respond to something in the review and create a discussion whether they have read the book or not. My problem is that I am often reading books that no one else is reading, so discussions might be more around the topic, the author, or perhaps some other associational topic. I do like that.

>26 edwinbcn: I agree. You just don't get the realtime back and forth that you do in person... but...
>34 LesMiserables: what Hal says is also true. I was just reading part of an interview with Oates where she talks about how much enjoyment she gets from (and how much time is spent on) writing emails back and forth to her many author friends and literary acquaintances).

>31 AsYouKnow_Bob: ha ha! How's that going for you?
>33 bragan: ha ha! How's that going for you?
>32 rebeccanyc: That's interesting. Hadn't thought of that.

>31 AsYouKnow_Bob: ha ha! How's that going for you?

...It's working SO far....

>36 AsYouKnow_Bob: Surely, you have ALL the books there at home ready and waiting for your perusal. (apologies for calling you Shirley).

>29 lilisin: I meant to add: no, not weird. My husband has the same problem, only he wants a time slot for about 250 pages - at least for novels. So, while he reads pages and pages of stuff, (he is always reading something), he probably also has a very low book count.

>36 AsYouKnow_Bob: Surely, you have ALL the books there at home ready and waiting for your perusal.

Right - it's an insurance policy: I can't die while I still have a TBR pile....

> 38

Unless the abbreviation means... to be recycled :-(

> Ha, Ja. My long-term goal is to read all my books. My low-range estimate (I probably have more) is that I should read 200 books for 20 years to finish reading all the physical books I have (only counting books which one might actually read cover-to-cover). Problem is, of course, I buy more than I read.

>33 bragan: ha ha! How's that going for you?\

In my case, not so good. They keep writing the damned things faster than I can read them!

>41 bragan: It's a conspiracy, you know.

> 19

Halicarnassus, the word count idea is a good one (although I would not want the competitive spirits among us to have another challenge), but some books are simply harder than others. I can read a long crime novel in a few days and it can take me weeks to read a book of poetry.

Well this is so true. I read Philosophy at University for my undergraduate degree, which by and large requires several reads of difficult abstract reasoning that an author is expounding, on pretty much a regular basis.

I am currently reading The Well-Educated Mind by Susan Wise Bauer and she recommends interacting with the books one chooses by doing several reads of it and taking notes, making up your own title, chapter headings etc. She recommends various strategies to tackle novels, autobiographies, history, drama and poetry.

Joining the Great Conversation I think it is called and follows in the framework of Adler and other Classical Educators and the trivium.

Certainly this slows reading down dramatically, but I would wager that it seriously nulls any of those moments we have of remembering only scant details of books we have read and enjoyed. And I think that is what it is all about.

2008 145
2009 171
2010 174
2011 195
2012 151

From 2009 - 2011 I did the category challenges, so was compelled to finish the categories at top speed so that I could read something else. The advantage was that I read a lot of books I wouldn't normally. The disadvantage - I read a lot of short books.

My plan for this year is to continue to read at least a few books from categories I would normally avoid, starting with science fiction.

> 44

I am also intending to read some science fiction this year as well as some crime and espionage; all of which have been neglected for too long. I more than likely will choose a Dick novel for the SF and a Chandler for the Crime. For espionage I may return to Le Carré, but am considering reading The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan which I haven't read for over thirty years in Secondary School.

>44 pamelad:, 45

I have also always avoided SF and Crime /Espionage, until about a year ago. I must say, I still won't read post-1980s works in these genre, but really enjoy the pre-1970s works.

> 46

I enjoyed the Ludlum Bourne Trilogy which unfortunately was not transferred faithfully to the big screen. I think that was written in the 70s.

>44 pamelad: Pam, have you read China Miéville's The City and the City? I think you might like it. The novel is in part a police procedural, with a nod to Raymond Chandler, but is also part science fiction, for it is set in a world unlike our own, yet... very thought-provoking. I recommend not reading the reviews before the book, though Michael's review, which is the 1st on the book's page here on LT, doesn't give the main conceit away. I was also thinking you might like some of Adam Roberts' work. Between Michael and I we have read nearly all his SF. Michael raved about Yellow Blue Tibia, "...combines first-rate science fiction with laugh-aloud humor, both in the service of a story about the scars left on Russia by the twentieth century, and about a Big Picture of our place in the universe."

>46 edwinbcn: Edwin, I'm curious, why do you think that is?

>46 edwinbcn:

There are some good things written in the last few decades as well (but I really like the old works as well...)

>49 AnnieMod:

I don't know, but there is a parallel with bestsellers. I like many bestsellers that were written before the 1980s, but since the 1980s bestseller lists are dominated by a few authors, and most bestsellers are trash.

I keep coming across mentions of The City and the City. I'll have to quietly remove it from the pile on my SO's side of the bed.

Halicarnassus, it's good to see another Philosophy major. Boy, we really chose our degrees based on the job market, didn't we?

I found that the act of recording my reading and writing something about it allows me to remember it. I don't know if it's just repeatedly typing the title and author in various places, or that I have to think about each book or short story in order to write something about it or if I'm reading more thoughtfully these days.

I too find that writing about a book helps me to remember it. But then, if I don't, handy dandy LT will tell me!

>50 edwinbcn: It's interesting that you draw your line at roughly the computer age (at least the personal computer age). So, prior to Neuromancer.

Before 2010, I have my reading records organized by decade rather than year, because the records are mostly reconstructed from memory, and I can remember that I read something, but not necessarily the year. I turned 13 in late 1999, so 2000 really marks the boundary between kid's books and teen/adult books, so it's fairly easy to remember in which decade I read what. In 2010, I started writing down what I read.

1990-1999: 75 books/year (average) {This is what comes of being a child, having near-boundless free time, and reading short books
2000-2009: 14 books/year (average)
2010: 59 books
2011: 121 books
2012: 67 books
2013: 60 books (projected)

What's sad is that if I don't read another book for the rest of this decade, my average number of books read 2010-2019 will still be more than the average from 2000-2009.

My problem is that I'll sit down and read three books in one day (I read very quickly), but then not be in the mood to read for two or more weeks, so my progress is very uneven. Then I scramble to read all my library books the day before they are due.

> 51

Halicarnassus, it's good to see another Philosophy major. Boy, we really chose our degrees based on the job market, didn't we?

*slowly nods* ;-)

>48 avaland: Lois, I've made a Recommended collection and added The City and the City and Yellow Blue Tibia.

Like you, Edwin, I've so far stuck to pre-1970 science fiction. The two on my shelves to read are Flow My tears, the Policeman Said and Flowers for Algernon. Stranger in a Strange Land is on the wishlist.

I read very few books for pleasure, definitely less than 10 per year, when I was in undergraduate, graduate and medical school, and during my pediatric residency, which I completed at the end of June in 2000. I started work that August, and I finally had spare time to read the books I had accumulated over 15 years, as I probably read less than 100 books during that entire time. I bought a PDA that year, so I started to catalog my reading as well. These are the number of books I've since 2000, except that I don't have my 2007 and 2008 totals handy (although I know that I read at least 100 books in each of those years):

2000: 16
2001: 32
2002: 45
2003: 102
2004: 100
2005: 105
2006: 113
2007: ???
2008: ???
2009: 162
2010: 162
2011: 166
2012: 128

I learned to read quickly in medical school and residency, and I can easily read 250-300 words on a day off. I work less than half the days of the year (12-15 work days per month), so I have plenty of spare time to read. I'd like to starting reading more slowly and thoroughly, as I have a tendency to speed through books the way I speed through medical journal articles, but 125-150 books per year is a reasonable goal for me.

1991 17
1992 15
1993 11
1994 14
1995 18
1996 11
1997 8
1998 15 - started working
1999 14
2000 16 - married
2001 19
2002 18
2003 21
2004 16 - 1st child
2005 30
2006 31 - joined LT, 2nd child
2007 34
2008 41
2009 47 - joined Club Read
2010 39
2011 55
2012 68

I don't know what to make of this all, but it's fun to look at. I read exactly as many books the past two years as I read from 1991 to 1999 (123)

>56 pamelad: er...I don't think Stranger in a Strange Land is going to do anything for you. I read it in the early 80s and it was on the verge of being really dated then (it's really a very 60s novel). Most of Heinlein now is very dated. And, as for Flowers for Algernon, well, Michael and I were just discussing it and decided you might find it a bit saccharine. We'd just hate to have you be turned off from the genre entirely :-)