Eat 50 books a year?

[denny]

Just found my way to 50_in_07 (via a post by skorpionuk). I'm not sure I can be bothered to find the time to write reviews of most of the books I read, but I was interested to know if I read more or less than their target of 50 books per year. Initially it seems like a low number, then you express it as basically one per week and you wonder if it's that low after all.

The stuff I've bought or read in the last few months tends to be piled on top of my bookcases (due to never quite having enough space for all the books I own) so I figured it should be fairly easy to list at least most of the stuff I've read since the summer...


Books I have read in the last month or two, in no particular order:

Babel-17 - Samuel Delaney
Blood Music - Greg Bear (novel based on a short story which I've read a few times before)
Nova Swing - M John Harrison (much better than the last thing of his I read (and wrote a rather scathing review of on here), but still not particularly good (imho - ymmv))
The Evolution Man - Roy Lewis
Press Send - John McLaren
Soft - Rupert Thomson
The Fourth Bear - Jasper Fforde
Winds of Fate - Mercedes Lackey
Winds of Change - Mercedes Lackey
Winds of Fury - Mercedes Lackey
Dervish is Digital - Pat Cadigan
Fat - Rob Grant
Capacity - Tony Ballantyne
The Cat Who Walks Through Walls - Robert Heinlein (re-read numerous times)
Time For The Stars - Robert Heinlein (also re-read many times, although not as many as the above)
Mona Lisa Overdrive - William Gibson (re-read several times)
Virtual Light - William Gibson (re-read lots of times)
Rendezvous With Rama - Arthur C Clarke
The Space Merchants - Pohl and Kornbluth


The three Mercedes Lackey books were loaned to me by romauld, and several of the others were a gift from indusbitch - many thanks :)

Most of the rest were bought by me in the first week of September using some of my birthday money (except the ones I've noted as being re-read). As most of the new ones were at the bottom of the pile, I think that dates this chunk of reading fairly accurately.

Oh, I also re-read the Lensmen series last month, that's another seven I think. So... total, about 25-30, by the time you factor in a few that I've probably re-shelved and forgotten re-reading.

I think I've been reading more these last few months than the six months before, but I'm fairly happy about that... I think I'm back to normal levels for me now, after a confusing period where I was reading a lot less. Not sure what happened to cause that, nor what changed it back again.

Comments

[bioguyver.livejournal.com]

I would have said 50 books was a reasonable target in a year seeing as I can read a book about every 2 weeks and I only read on the train to work. Then I met Katy and she read exactly the same article about how many books you can read in a year. Back in January she decided to do the'50 book challenge' as can be seen on her journal mrsbioguyver. I think from memory she had read 60 ish books by March and decided to stop counting then :)

Its not like she is forever reading either. She just happens to be able to read at the speed of Light :)

[cokephreak.livejournal.com]

I make that 26.
Thats 1 every 2 days (ish) if it were over 2 months. Or 1 every 3.5 days if over 3.
Either way thats pretty impressive.

I saw Terry's post and started then (begining of november). A year doesn't have to start on 1st Jan.
Only trouble is that january makes the year easy to remember, I may lose track of when I started.
If only I had some kind of journal to mark my progress and keep track.

(Not on schedule so far :-/ -My book invokes too much thought)

[skorpionuk.livejournal.com]

I thought similar things, so I've now decided to track my books on Facebook, which has several apps to do it with (I'm evaluating at present).

[ajva.livejournal.com]

50 books in a year is a pretty shit-load, IMO, but I love the fact that quite a few of my mates might not think it is. You're all obviously well-read bright sparks. Maybe, for balance, I need more presque-illiterate pals. :o)

One book on my target list this year, for example, has been Ibn Warraq's Why I am Not a Muslim, which is extremely interesting, but I keep setting it aside and coming back to it, because it's pretty heavy and solid. Maybe I need to read less heavy shit and more bright stuff. What do you think? :o)

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

I was thinking as I knocked up this list that I probably only read so many books per month because I read the literary equivalent of soap operas and sitcoms - not very taxing stuff :)

[promiseclean.livejournal.com]

I used to have quite an impressive book collection back in Germany, where there was space to keep them all. Now I give away most of them after I've read them.

Not sure if I actually manage 50 books a year, but I do read quite fast. Unfortunately, most of the stuff I read isn't of the intellectual variety, mostly Terry Pratchett (and the likes) and I have a thing for rock biografies (The Herion Diaries by Nikki Sixx are pretty good and The Dirt is still one of my favourites).

If it's quantity over quality, I think I'm doing quite well :)

[world-of-skin.livejournal.com]

I'm a really slower reader, always have been. I think it's because I read a paragraph or a page and then zone out for a minute and think about it and then remember that I'm meant to be reading, not imagining/pondering/predicting things, a few minutes later.

I certainly don't read 50 books a year, and I'm a bloody Literature student! I hardly read anything anymore, ever :( I got an A in A-level English Literature without ever reading any of the set texts and this is pretty much what I am still doing at university. How awful is that?

(Oh, yes, hello by the way, I have remembered how to log in to Livejournal again :D )

[kelemvor.livejournal.com]

I used to read 50-60 books a year, including re-reads. However, these were usually fairly lacking in intensity. More recently that number has dropped as I've managed to move onto heavier things ("Stranger in a strange land" kept me busy for a while this year, and Dan Simmons' "Hyperion" and "Endymion" omnibus editions did so last year) and found other things to do with my time.
(And I still need a book icon...)