How Much Do You Read?
This week, February 23-27, is Read Me Week. Read Me Week highlights the importance and fun of reading. It’s the creation of Book’em, an organization that seeks to inspire a love of books and reading in all children.
It’s probably safe to say that most writers are also avid readers. Our love of the written word drives us to enjoy other people’s words as much as our own.
A couple of years ago I had the stunning realization that I had stopped reading books. As a child, I read constantly, a book always in hand. Even the newspaper or a cereal box would suffice, as long as I had something to read. My parents even forbade me to read at home for a while, because they thought all the reading was interfering with finishing my homework. Unwilling to give up my favorite pastime, I began reading in all my free periods at school – the time when I normally did my homework. Stop me from reading? No way. I went through at least a hundred books a year, probably more, which is substantial since most of them came from the school or public library and I had limited access to each.
You can imagine my surprise then when I realized that as an adult I was reading less than 10 books a year, if even that. Not a good circumstance for a writer or a happy circumstance for someone who professes to love books.
So in January 2006 I decided to fix it. My method was simple – I began to write down the title, author and date that I finished each book. A simple list to keep track of what I was reading and how many books per year.
In 2006, I read 44 books. I discovered Patricia Briggs in March and finished all of her then in-print books by the start of April. I also started reading outside my favored genres (science fiction and fantasy) to round out my reading – The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold (literary), Emma by Jane Austen (literary), The Queen’s Gambit by Walter Tevis (contemporary), A Morbid Taste for Bones by Ellis Peters (mystery), The Book of the Dead by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child (mystery), and The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion (memoir). New genre authors discovered include Michelle Sagara, Holly Black, Marie Brennen, Kat Richardson, and Lynn Viehl.
In 2007, I read 92 books – nearly two books a week. A sampling of the numbers – May – 8, June – 11, July – 8, August – 11, September – 17, October – 11. 2007 featured several runs of book reading from the same author. June was primarily S.L. Viehl, her Stardoc series. August was Sara Douglass. September was a mix – Eileen Wilks, Karen Chance, and J.R. Ward. October and November were Sherrilyn Kenyon.
It is fascinating to look across the lists and see the patterns in the books I’ve read or find the day when I first read a particular author.
How is your reading going? If you’ve fallen behind in your fiction reading, take Read Me Week as your opportunity to commit to reading more books in 2009 to support your writing.
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5 comments
Amy (2 comments.) on February 23, 2009 at 11:45 pm
You hit the nail on the head…mine! I confess to being way behind in my reading. Like you said not good for a writer or book lover and even worse a librarian. I need to get back in the swing of reading for pleasure.
Amy’s last blog post..Do Your Deadlines Whoosh By?
Phil on February 23, 2009 at 11:54 pm
Even if I only get through a small handful of books a year, I’m always reading something. It just so happens that half the books I read are about 1000 pages long, which take me a while to get through.
Cheryl on February 26, 2009 at 8:24 am
@Amy I hear you. I’m thinking of trying a new plan – starting a new book each Friday/Saturday. I can finish it on the weekend and still have time left during the week to get things done. That would be at least 50 books a year – a decent pace.
@Phil I’m like you, always reading something, but I don’t tackle many 1000-page books. If it was fiction and intriguing, I wouldn’t get anything done until I had finished it.
AravisGirl (5 comments.) on February 27, 2009 at 12:23 am
I haven’t felt like reading what we have around the house lately, and my library card’s blocked
AravisGirl’s last blog post..
Cheryl on February 28, 2009 at 1:05 am
Ouch! Not having library access is bad. I’ve recently discovered that there are a lot of places to read or download books on the Internet, like the Baen Free Library at http://www.baen.com/library/. That might work as a substitute until you have access to other books again.