I’m always fascinated by people who can read multiple books in a week and even a book a day.
Even when I didn’t have a wife and two children and would spend a good chunk of my Saturday’s in bed reading I would struggle to read more than 150 pages. Back then, during those those listless days when I had 12 hours a week of of Uni-time (my busiest year, thank you Arts degree) I was doing well if I finished two books a week. It was the 90s and the average book – Stephen King aside – was less than 350 pages*.
These day I aim for 45 pages a day. I have a complex time management system in place to ensure I hit 45 pages a day. But work that out over 7 days and it’s about 315 pages. So, on average, about 65% of your regular genre novel**. Because I this I often find myself dithering over what to choose next to read. There’s so many genre and literary novels I want to catch up with – and not just books published this year – that it’s near impossible to make a decision.
I know this is a first world problem. In fact you’d be hard pressed to actually describe it as a problem. But yes I do a feel a tinge of envy… jealousy… when others describe what they’ve read over a month and I realise I’d struggle to read a third of that.
* Estimation NOT based on science or actual evidence.
** See note above.
I think the best I have ever done was 6 books in a week, three of those being Rowena Cory Daniells books. I timed myself at one stage and it works out to an average of about a page a minute. But then I also like to do some stuff in between and my wife occasionally likes to talk to me as well. This year its been luck to be a book a week though.
I’d have to go to a desert island with no Wifi etc for me to do 6 books in a week.