I am currently on my 66th book this year. It is a novel and the characters are obviously works of fiction but they are a family of readers, one daughter in particular. She is in her thirties (not a little kid) and easily reads HUNDREDS of books in a year! I was astonished by this because I thought my goal of 85 books this year was rather lofty. I assume some people can get higher than that (I probably could too if reading didn't always make me so sleepy no matter the subject matter) but this just sounded outrageous.
I decided to look up the record to see how possible this is. My research found that the record is 534 by a man in China. Is anyone else just absolutely amazed by this???? I'm not sure what constitutes as a book for this record. I suppose I could read that many little kid books in a year (if I don't go crazy first) but something tells me that these are legit, hundreds of pages per book.
There are speed reading techniques and classes which would allow someone to read more books in a year but I do wonder how much information you absorb with those. I feel like it's more similar to skimming but I really don't know much about them.
On the other side of the spectrum, there is a statistic floating around out there (from the Washington Post) that claims that one in four Americans have not read a single book in the past year (well, 2007). I would hope this number has decreased as the years have passed but seeing as the people who did read (part of the 75%) were mostly women and older people (I don't know the age cut off for that), I'm not entirely sure it would have dropped. I don't know that many men who like to read. Even David doesn't read all that much but I can tell you, he has read at least one book this year (don't worry, the real number is more than one). I suppose it is TV and the internet that have taken over instead of reading. You would think that this would put e-readers out of business but someone must be buying them. Maybe it's those women and older people.
I know next year my reading goal is going to be much lower (because I'll be a new mom) but I hope to read 100 books in a year (or more) at some point in my life and I hope that the 25% catches up.
I've only read a couple of books this year. I don't know if i've read any in the last six months. No shame.
ReplyDeleteBut i have a friend who read almost 100 books one year while she was in school and working. Legit books, like long Russian ones and everything. That might have even been the year she read Ulysses. I still don't know how.