According to Goodreads, in 2010 I read:
- 89 books, containing…
- 20,637 pages, or about…
- 4-7 million words
This only includes books: novels, short stories, nonfiction, technical books, comics, ebooks. It excludes other hard-to-track writing: news websites, blogs, magazines, etc. (I can safely say I’ve read fewer than one total page of printed newspaper last year.)
The page count is actual, not estimated. (Goodreads is aware of each book’s length.) The word count is estimated. I started with the somewhat-standard average of about 350 words per paperback-page, which would yield a total of 7 million words. But since many of these books were comic books, which typically have a lower word-count, I’ll have to guess at a range. I feel silly even saying this in 2011, but I don’t consider comics “simpler” than books. I take about as long to go through a page of panels as I would with words.
This comes out to about 56.5 book-pages per day. I believe I usually read about one page per minute. My commute to work, during which I usually read if it’s convenient, is 20 minutes each way. I get a lot more reading done on the weekends, and when I travel.
In 2011 so far, I’ve read 73 pages per day. If we accept that in some sense, comics also contain 350 “words” per page, I might do 10 million “words” this year.
Of course, quantity isn’t the point of reading, and the whole enterprise isn’t a contest. But, I will say this: I never would have discovered most of my favorite books had I not learned about them from reading some thrice-removed, probably forgettable book. Dirt isn’t gold, but no claim ever produced gold only.
Earlier this year I wrote more about the books I read in 2010, including the total list, with links. I hope it helps you find some new favorites!
