Day 302: Books by the Number

I always hope to read 52 books per year, but I don’t seem to reach that goal very often. In 2020, for example, I only read 40 books. Perhaps it’s time to think about why I keep falling short.

A couple of days ago I finished reading my first book of 2021 (Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts by Kate Racculia). I enjoyed it and read it fairly quickly, but still it took me 9 or 10 days to finish. At that pace I can expect to read between 36 and 41 books per year. Other books might take longer than Tuesday Mooney did. Nonfiction, for example, tends to go slower. Mystery, romance, and children’s books go much faster. Since I read a mix, I’m probably going to average out to 36-41 books. I should just accept it and adjust my expectations accordingly. So, this year I’m going to aim to read 40 books instead of 52.

However, if I really want to read more books per year, there are two obvious ways to increase the number. One would be to read less nonfiction and more mystery, romance, and children’s books. That would be almost like cheating, though, don’t you think?

The other way would be to read more pages per day, but how many pages would that be? The answer to that question may lie in a theory I saw passed around on Twitter recently. The theory is that you read as many books per year as you read pages per day. Therefore, if you wanted to read 52 books per year, you would need to read 52 pages per day.

On the surface this theory sounds too good to be true, but mathematically it would work out if the average book length were roughly 365 pages. Is it? I don’t know. More accurately, for the theory to hold true for me, the average length of the books that I read over the course of the year would have to be near 365.

That’s certainly possible. The average page count for my three most recent books is 379. Long books would raise the average some, while short ones would pull it down. It could ultimately settle near 365. I’ll keep this theory in mind as I read in 2021.

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