Wednesday, October 15, 2014

The Big Read Update: TIED!

As you may recall, this year I aimed to beat my all-time record for Number of Books Read in One Year.  The record was 147 from 2011.  Well, last night I finished book number 147 for this year!  Whoo-hoo!!!!

So I'm pretty sure I'll break the 2011 record.  There was one book I waffled on counting -- a collection of comic strips, Sherman's Lagoon: Lunch Wore A Speedo.  I mean, it's not much reading.  But when I checked my 2011 list, I discovered that I had counted a Sherman's Lagoon collection then as well, so either I eliminate them both, or count them both.  Either way, I'm still tied!

My friend Mary suggested that a more accurate challenge would entail counting the number of pages read, to ensure fairness.  After all, I might have read fifty tomes of 400+ pages each back in 2011, and fifty slim children's books of 150 pages in 2014, yet counted them the same.  Because I love to track stuff like that, I went ahead and noted the page counts for all 147 books.  The 2011 total came to a bit over 39,000 pages.  The 2014 total so far is, guess what -- a bit over 39,000 pages.  Hah!

Please don't make me do word counts.

Next year I'm planning to relax -- no more Big Read years, no more record-breaking efforts.  I think I'll try reading more in depth, maybe get a few 500, 600 -- nay, even 1,000-page tomes and consume them in an extremely leisurely fashion.