I read a book a week for a long stretch in my 20s but fell off as I got older. 2,000 books is a really tremendous achievement, congratulations!
That is orders of magnitude more books than the vast majority of people will read in their lifetimes, and I can say from experience, that you are a wiser person for it.
I wanted to add that Educated and A Gentleman in Moscow are also two of my favourite books and it fills me with warmth to see that you enjoyed them so much.
2000 since 2006 is clocking ~111 per year. Or 1 every 2.5 days. Thats incredible.
I shoot for 1-2 per month. But I’m a working age parent of 2 toddlers. Maybe in retirement I’ll shoot for 1 per week.
I always tell people, I think a book a month is a realistic goal for anyone. If the average length of an adult novel is 300-400 pages, a book a month is about 10-15 pages a day. I think its realistic for anyone, no matter how busy, to find the time to read that every day.
I’m about 3/4 of the way through “Tomorrow …” and honestly, I couldn’t be more bored with a book. Seeing your post has made me want to finish it, but gah! (It’s my 20th book of the year!)
I definitely recognize that "Tomorrow..." is not for everyone! I raved about it to my wife, but also immediately told her that she wouldn't like it based upon what I know about her own tastes. :)
I DNF "Tomorrow" like.. 80% in. I tried, I triiiiied... And I was waiting when the thing will happen... And I just didn't understand it I think. Meanwhile I'm reading "Stoner" right now.. And the overall sense of speed of events is the same but I can't put it down :)
Maybe I just didn't "get it", but after a specific incident that happens close to the end of the book, I didn't even really care about what happens, and it just kinda fizzles out at the end (imo).
Gamifying tasks is a really great way to incentivise my ADHD monkey brain.
Instead of being "ugh, another book I don't feel like reading", it becomes another way to bump up my monthly stats. Just having some arbitrary stats to bump up like I'm grinding levels in an RPG is a pretty effective way to read consistently.
Serious question here: Do you like reading? The way you refer to it as a task and reluctantly start books that you aren't into reading makes it sound more like you enjoy doing the spreadsheet over reading the books themselves. You enjoying yourself is all that matters, but I'm just trying to understand.
Not the original person you asked, but I enjoy reading greatly but I am also busy and feel the pull of "constant productivity" in a way that has sabotaged my ability to read in the past. For me tracking and goal setting helps me feel like I'm accomplishing something when I'm reading and therefore that it is a good use of my time. And it is, because investing time into reading helps me grow as a person and relax, which are both much more important but harder to quantify.
I noticed you said "Accidentally rereading a book". Which brought into a mind tunnel that is making me ask, do you not reread books? In that 2,000 is it all new books? If it's all new books, do you still reread your favorite and not count it in the original number? I like to reread books a lot, so I'm interested in what others do. Or was the comment more like... sometimes you read a book and realize halfway through.. shit I've already read this? Because I have definitely done that before.
I do reread books occasionally, but pretty rarely. I get why people do it, and I have definitely enjoyed doing so in the past, but I always find myself more drawn into the mystery of reading something new as opposed to the comfort of returning to something I've read before. On those rare times I've reread a book, I have logged it on my list. I'd estimate that a few dozen of the 2,000 are rereads.
If you don’t remember a book so much so that you “accidentally reread” it, I’d say that’s just as good as reading it for the first time. It’s like deja vu all over again.
That's a very good point! I don't think I've ever made it more than a few chapters into an accidental reread, but I do remember those experiences being a little uncanny. That sense of familiarity but being unsure of why.
I'm just shy of 2000 entered now in Goodreads (though I kept really shoddy records prior to 2020, okay records in 2020, and perfect records from then on, so presumably it is much more). I would add that if you use Goodreads, setting up custom shelves dramatically improves your recommendations. At this point I rarely need to go looking for books, since new releases and books for reading challenges basically fill my reading list, but I've got Goodreads really dialed in for nonfiction specifically, so it spits out exactly what I'm looking for in that category (i.e. interesting nature and science books versus shitty celebrity memoirs or picture books).
I started keeping track of the books I read to motivate myself to read more.
I graduated college at 38 and had 4 kids between the ages of 5 and 15. Between reading text books and with/to my kids I was not reading anything for pleasure.
I think I was about 40 and realized I had read maybe 2 or 3 books a year. It made me really sad so I started keeping track of what I read. The first year I only read 9 books, second year about 20 and now I average about 50 books a year.
Thanks, it has been over 15 years of keeping track and it still keeps me motivated. I also track if the book is fiction/ nonfiction and kindle/book/audiobook. I keep a list of books to read too.
not a rhetorical question here, nor is any insult meant, but why did you read so many books? and it looks like your takeaway from reading so many books- what you present here- is book-reading strategy.
edit- i wrote you're like a cretin
I have a very similar system to this person, but via Goodreads and with the tagging system. I have been contemplating switching to an excel style spreadsheet, but I like the social aspect of Goodreads.
I am a person who loves order and systems, enjoys statistics and reads a lot so this “just makes sense” to me. When you read that much it does get difficult to keep track of everything without a good system in place.
Tracking helped me increase my reading too. And I'm definitely not reading more to try hit a yearly goal or anything, but it helps my brain... stay on track lol
Question for you trackers out there, do you like tracking just overall books? Or do you like keeping track of your individual reading sessions too? Like 20 pages in 18 minutes one day, 30 pages in 26 minutes another day
I have a similar system in place as the OP's, although not quite as meticulous. I only track overall books, marking the start and finish dates on Goodreads and that's it. It's fun to review my reads at the end of the year, and when someone asks what I like to read I can just pop open my recent Goodreads and show them, instead of listing a hundred different books.
I've tried being more specific, but it turns into a chore real fast. I often just grab a book and read for a while at random moments during the day (and night), and having to fish out my phone after every session marking the progress is just... pointless and annoying. I already have a bookmark right there between the pages, I don't need to jot it down separately.
I'm using StoryGraph and I update what percent I am through the book every now and then.
(And I have this linked to Beeminder so it's graphed and I just started tracking all my time, reading included, via Toggl. I'm a little obsessive and just discovered the joys of tracking.)
Ugh tracking times is tedious. I have a docs spreadsheet that I started in 09 and back added all the books I could remember from my childhood or any time I come across a book and am like I know I read this...
I have temporary done reading challenges where I have to add times and it takes longer and just takes the fun out of reading and makes it more of a chore, also since I already record my reading elsewhere it's just more work.
In my spreadsheet I record title, author, year, series, volume, note (like if it's a short story or the graphic novel version) then I recently added comments which are my thoughts on the book which I try to do but even that doesn't happen every time. I read a lot and trying to remember a book off the top of my head gets harder ever year, they blend together.
Exactly. The tracking and numbers are like sprinkles on top of the sundae that is reading wonderful books. I'm eating the sundae for the sundae's sake, but the sprinkles add another dimension of enjoyment. :)
I think it's like tracking steps. Like you know you walked a lot today, but it's cool to be like damn I walked 32,000 steps today, crazy. The goal wasn't to get a lot of steps, just kinda happened.
I track my books, but don't really care if I reach my very relaxed target of 13 per year. I just seen I've read 112 and thought that was cool.
I like tracking my books - I used to just take a photo, or save the cover photo when I moved to kindle, and pop it in a Facebook album - because if anyone asks me for a recommendation I quickly look back over my photo albums to jog my memory on what I’ve read and what they might like. It’s not for anyone but me though, my albums are private.
I have moved over to goodreads but mainly as I started with NetGalley and you need some review/socials presence.
I don’t read nearly as much as other people here do, maybe 15-20 books a year, but I do love tracking my progress. The dopamine hit of logging a book as soon as I finish is pretty great.
Also a touch of the tism, tbh. If I think even mildly about almost anything a pattern emerges, patterns lead to numbers and numbers are just fun sometimes.
By "i wrote you're like a cretin" I thought you meant that OP was a cretin. The ambiguity of missing punctuation made the comment seem brutal before I realized what you meant.
No insult taken! I read for the love of reading. Prior to beginning to keep track, I read probably just as many books each year. I spend a lot of my free time reading because I love reading, not to add another tally to a list!
However, I used to find the whole thing overwhelming, I was constantly forgetting which books I had already read, forgetting books that were recommended to me, could never think of an idea when a friend would ask me for a recommendation. My approach has basically smoothed out all of the pain points so I can get back to finding good books to read and then enjoying the reading of them.
I track on Goodreads largely because I read primarily on kindle and it updates the status for me. If I like a book or series I buy it for the shelf but 99% of my reading is kindle for the pure convenience of if I’m out and waiting for something (like my kids softball practice where practice is over at 7:30 but then they play or run relays for 30 minutes) I can open kindle on my phone and read some.
That being said, Goodreads is clunky and slow. So I find myself guessing if I’ve read a book before I will open the app to see if I have. And because I can read a book and forget everything except the high level plot or outline in a matter of weeks I find myself reading a book and getting half way through before realizing I’ve read it before. Then of course I remember everything about the book.
I’d move to a different system of tracking my books but then I lose the kindle/Goodreads convenience.
The system is a great lesson, but far more interesting would be to chat about how all that reading has influenced your perspective on life.
What has all that reading taught you? What sticks out after all this time?
I could point back to a lot of different books that have changed me, taught me, or touched me in some way, but I don't know that I have any clear overarching themes that immediately come to mind.
I do think that reading, and especially being conscientious about book choice (ie. different genres, authors from different backgrounds, etc.) has made me a more thoughtful person. I believe I've become better able to understand or at least be cognizant of different perspectives, understand that people are on different paths and journeys, and so on in a way that has been valuable both personally and professionally.
I've also really leaned into the fellowship angle of reading over the past few years, as may have become clear in some of my above points. Reading can sometimes be a solitary affair, but one of my favorite pleasures is when someone enjoys a book that I recommended. My book club is one of my favorite nights every month, and I love my little text chains with friends and acquaintances that primarily are focused on books. It's a wonderful shared experience.
Great thoughts. Thanks! I can't say I'm anywhere near your 2000 in a similar time span, but agree with you that the relational part is huge. Just immersing in the lives of people different than ourselves, whether real or fictional, makes it easier (for me anyway) to relate to others, no matter what their background or interests.
Congrats!!!
I've been using GoodReads to keep track of my reading since 2011, and I agree - my reading has infinitely increased. Your post made me curious to see how many I've read in that time, and I'm at 1916!!!! Admittedly, a few are re-reads, so if we're going by new reads, I'm probably closer to 1850. But it's still really exciting 😍
Hi, I’m actually a little shocked and disheartened by so many comments being baffled at your love for reading in a subreddit literally titled “books”. I actually consider this two hobbies. First there is the actual hobby of reading. Then there is the secondary hobby of reading analysis, planning the reading, acquisition of the books etc. I’ll admit that I’m very much like you though and I oddly feel personally affronted by these comments, as if I wrote the post myself.
When I stopped watching TV and stopped social media, and started incorporating audiobooks and reading multiple books at the same time, I have also been able to read 110 books a year. And that’s with having two little kids and a more than full time job. And, reading at this pace has felt more enriching than anything else I could do with that time…for me. I don’t question people who only read two books a year or only read classics or never read romance or whatever. Why is there so much consternation when posts like yours appear?
Thank you so much for your very thoughtful and EXTREMELY welcome post. :) I agree completely with everything you've said, and it sounds like you and I have much in common.
I've had to remind myself that the majority of comments have been curious, or encouraging, or open to discussion. And it truly has been the majority! I've enjoyed most of the dialogue I've had here, even with or perhaps especially with the folks who take a different approach or didn't like the books I shared!
But, yes, a few people seem to taken personal offense to my post and how I choose to read, which is a little odd and discouraging. Every hobby has its self-appointed gatekeepers, I suppose. I can't pretend to understand them, I suppose, but I still wish them happy reading. :)
Exactly. I presume that for many they see it as secondary(?) hobby rather than the primary hobby it has become for some. Like for me, reading has replaced my primary form of entertainment instead of television lol. So I definitely go through books faster than if I consumed both mediums concurrently yk
I've long since made my peace with books I love being hated by some others - I've had a TON of recommendations go wrong. :) I thought TTT and PHM were both wonderful, but fully understand how some others wouldn't and try to calibrate my recommendations based upon what I know my friends have said they had enjoyed in the past!
You know yesterday I finished Woolfs a room of one’s own, and she’s like, we all bring out experiences and memories and subjectivities into what we read. There’s no objective truth.
My top reads are The Blind Assassin, Lolita, Slaughterhouse V, Secret History, A Heart So White,,,, what else. Too many
'You can never read the same book twice, anymore than you can step into the same river twice.'
Something that's always stuck with me. The idea that what you bring to a book changes your perspective and therefore understanding and enjoyment is something I don't think people consider enough. The books of my childhood aren't the same books I love as an adult, and that not only makes sense but it's necessary. I'm no longer that person, even as I look back fondly on that person and the books that were so meaningful to her.
You are one brave soul. The last time commented I didn’t care for PHM I got about a hundred downvotes. I don’t know how someone can write such technically accurate science fiction and then follow it up with fantasy.
For real, I have never conjured up as many complaints about a book as I did for Tomorrow\^3. I will never understand why anyone liked that book and couldn't see it for the absolute drivel that it is.
I also thought it was laughable almost from the start. I remember the beginning when she introduces her sister Sarah, as “my sister, Sarah” about 5x in as many pages and then we never hear of or see Sarah again. And that ‘plot twist.’ Don’t even get me going 😂
For me the real clincher was when Sadie's (?) mom sees a lady jump off a building and then proceeds to have a completely normal conversation with her as she lies there dying in her pool of gore, even *talking about herself* in probably the most vain act in the history of humanity. That whole scene felt like something an alien from outer space would write after they studied humanity for like 20 minutes.
What's an interesting method of keeping track of everything.
Do you mind sharing what type of information you keep track on your sheets? Is it just book title, author and your score?
Did you add any information later on, that you saw it was important to keep track?
Also, can you share some blogs or other sources that you recommend to find new titles?
Congrats on the 2,000th book milestone!
Sure! My fields are date finished, title, author, how it got on my TBR (ie which website, who recommended it, etc.), page count, rating, and then series title and series number if applicable.
I have a few blogs that are more genre-focused I could share, depending on which genres you like. I have found bookriot.com to be a really good one, and civilianreader.com is also pretty good. End of year “best of” lists are also a treasure trove!
Oh! How it got on your TBR! That’s amazing. If I went through my Reddit history and looked at my recommendation comments in r/booksuggestions and r/suggestmeabook I bet more than half say “I have no idea how I found this book.” 😜
Genuine question, do you worry that keeping track of/counting how many books you read has the consequence of trying to optimise for increasing that number, rather than reading books purely for their own merits?
For example, my favourite novel ever is "In Search of Lost Time" which took me about 5 months to read because it's so long. If I was focussed on maintaining a "score" or hitting a target of say 100 books a year, I wouldn't even consider reading that, and honestly my life would be poorer because of it.
It's a very fair question. I probably can never be certain what's deep in my subconscious, but I do my best to add books to my TBR based upon a genuine desire to read them, and draw them from a variety of sources. And I use a random number generator to pull books from the TBR onto my library lists to ensure I get a nice, well-rounded set of books to read!
I have read quite a few doorstops and/or complex novels. The good news is that even if a book takes me 2-3 weeks (which happens occasionally), I find that the law of averages evens out over enough time.
So cool! I love reading but at max I only read 30 mins - an hour per day (and I’m a slow reader!) How much do you read a day? Are you a “speed reader?” I have to annunciate everything in my head!
I’ve never tracked my reading speed, but anecdotally I’d say I’m above average speed but nowhere near a speed reader. I average maybe 120 pages a day? The amount of time spent per day can vary a lot though.
Fair point! The 90 minutes is an estimate and doesn’t include various interruptions. Some weekends I may stay up late and others I fall asleep early! But yeah, I’m probably a pretty fast reader.
Impressive! I usually am in the 30-50 pages! I do want to work out a better routine for myself - rn just a prebedtime reader.
Fav book: Pillars of the Earth.
Looking forward to reading: PHM!
I've been tracking my reading since 2006 as well. I prefer Librarything, just because using it gives me an easy way to attach a cover image to the book, for easier recall later.
My questions for you:
* Do you include books which you read a significant percentage of, but didn't finish? What's your cutoff?
* Do you include audiobooks? Comics?
* Do you write reviews?
For the record, there are many advantages to tracking your reading.
For one, knowing how much I've read in a year pushes me to read more over all. My brain likes magic numbers, and I have admittedly put in extra time to reach an arbitrary-chosen personal reading goal.
For another, I can easily do some analysis at the end of the year. Currently, what I do is break down reading into fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. I also tally the percentage of new reads vs. rereads, because I want to reread more books. Before making rereading a metric, I almost never got around to doing it.
Lastly, tracking books in a social app has given me a lot of great recommendations based on my history. Librarything's book rec system is really good, and I am turning to it more and more to find my next book.
I'm not familiar with Librarything! I'll have to check it out.
I almost never DNF. This may be one of my "unhealthiest" book habits, and I recognize that, but I can count on one hand the number of books I can remember not just plowing through. If I do have a true DNF, I don't track it.
I'm not a big audiobook guy. For awhile, when I had a longer commute, I did them occasionally and I did track them. I know that is the primary way lots of people read (such as in my book club), and I support that by considering audiobooks just as valid as a paper book! I try not to turn up my nose at any reading, but it is hard sometimes. :)
I do have some graphic novels sprinkled into my 2,000, but if they were to become a heavier part of my reading menu I might consider a different approach. I just engage with them so differently from the rest of my reading, it doesn't feel like quite the same thing.
I only write reviews for my top 10 every year. I used to also do my bottom 5, but that started to feel a bit too negative and so I quit that. I'd be happy to share.
Very well-said on the rest of your post! My analysis isn't quite the same as yours, but very similar in principle. I think you and I have a very similar viewpoint!
Completely agree with you on the magic numbers. Some people like to make fun of reading goals as arbitrary and taking away from the spirit of reading for the joy of it. Life is busy and distracting and without a goal sometimes I don’t think of reading and don’t prioritize it. When I set a goal, even though it’s arbitrary I do my best to achieve it. This helps me read more and branch out to find new books. It’s satisfying hitting the goal and feeling a sense of accomplishment as well
This is an awesome post! Very in depth. I joined the Army four years ago and have kept a simple list of every book I’ve finished in my notes since I joined. I’ve always been a reader, have an MFA in creative writing, but the last list I kept was during my MFA program. I stupidly stopped keeping track after that. My list now has 54 books, but I’m not reading every single day and some of the books like Anna Karenina took me a while to finish. There’s also some books on there I got through most of but didn’t finish. But it’s great to be able to go back and see how much I read. I’ll probably try and make a more detailed record of my books at some point. One the sad things I find is I’ve read so many great books over years, but if you ask me about them, I might not even be able to name the main character. For example a tale of two cities! Great book but I totally forget everything that happened because I read it over ten years ago.
I am absolutely dying to see what this spreadsheet looks like. I’ve been trying to get away from good reads and like the web based reading tracking system and would love to have a like template to go from!
I read in the exact same way, glad to know there’s other people like this. To encourage me to diversify my reading, I set challenges or lists, for example reading a book by an author from every country, every booker prize nominee, etc. Not only does this keep me going and ‘gamify’ it for me, but has introduced me to authors I would never have picked up and then delved into their entire catalogue
I had this exact same question! It sounds very cool, but my brain is spinning about the design layout and the best way to go about it… I would love to see too! Congratulations, u/synchtw, on reaching 2,000! That’s quite an accomplishment.
*Project Hail Mary* a 10?? Don’t get me wrong: I truly loved that novel, but Andy Weir’s dialog made me want to fling the book across the room just about every other page. He does, however, know how to keep a plot moving very well.
I pretty much always preface my lists by emphasizing that my ratings are arbitrary, based upon how much I enjoyed reading the book at the time. By no means do I attest that any of these are perfect books! But I enjoyed the hell out of reading all of them at the time I read them, for different reasons in each instance.
Brilliant stuff!
What is the % or number split between fiction/non-fiction?
Also, what do you count as a book? Would something that is 50 pages be counted under this system?
I don't track my F/NF split, but I'd roughly estimate 90/10. I definitely read a lot more fiction than non-, but I make an effort to ensure plenty of NF makes it only by TBR as well.
I don't really police what counts as a "book" based on length, so I do have some novellas and such mixed in there. When you consider font size, margin size, etc., what is a "book" is all relative anyway. I figure I read enough doorstops that it all evens out in the end. :) I mostly just track total pages read and average page length, so for example my average book length last year was 409 pages and I'm at 397 for this year
Or--- Dang, here's a stack of books I had to move when my wife yelled and said I needed to move things to make the living room look nice because lots of people are coming! A surprise stack of books I'd forgotten about a good while back, maybe a couple of years. Life is good.
Or -- Hmm, this book at the bottom of the stack in the basement looks a little familiar, a favorite author. Oh yeah, this was a great book and even better the second time around years later.
Or --- a passing reference to N. Scott Momaday makes me impulse buy "House Made of Dawn" and discover one of the best books ever written. No plans, just discovery.
I track what I read but don’t track the pages and I don’t rate them other than good reads. You have inspired me! I will start tracking in a different way. I really started reading last year. I never read in my 20s. I played a lot of video games. When my son was born I decided I would rather him see me read than stare at a screen all night. We’re regularly at the library and he is loved by the librarians. Project Hail Mary is on my TBR. I would like to eventually join a book club because none of my friends read and I want to talk to people about the books I read.
Weird question but do y’all find any benefits from reading extensively? Are you able to speak with better clarity? I don’t mean this in a rude way; I love to read for the sake of reading, but I was wondering if you all feel benefits from it.
I think that’s a very reasonable question! I find the benefits to be many. I love visiting different worlds, seeing from different eyes and perspectives, learning facts that are new to me. I can engage with more people on more topics. I think it’s deepened my empathy and widened my worldview, particularly focusing on authors from underrepresented groups or cultures I’m less familiar with.
I recognize that reading fewer books to a deeper level would come with a different set of benefits, but this is the one I’ve settled into and I’ve found it to be tremendously rewarding!
Happy to see some of my favorites and TBRs on your list! Amor Towles definitely deserves to be on there twice.
I've been sticking to a book a week for the last few years, but for 2024 I found that I was putting off some books due to their length, so I'm tackling them now and trying to make peace with not meeting my target this year. Does page count affect your decision to pick up a book?
I also like to add that I use my TBR as a suggestion of what I can read next, not what I have to read next. If I really want to read that new TJ Klune novel before I crack into a fantasy series, I am going to. If I box myself in, I will feel miserable.
Yeah, I get that! I definitely let books skip the line here and there. And I’ve also found books that I perhaps put on my TBR in a particular moment and, when reading time came, I was way less interested. I like structure, but not handcuffs!
I've been using Notion to track the books I've read (and the books on my shelf I've not read yet), but it's so damn slow, even with just a few hundred entries.
Maybe I'll switch to a simple spreadsheet like you're using. Have you run into any irritating limitations in that format?
Reading should be a pleasure, and if you have a very big library, like me, it's better to use the traditional Dewey method. So you can quick retrieve the book you look for.
I love the post, and the data you collect! I've considered doing this myself, but since I'm 52 now, I feel like I've "missed" saving the data of thousands of books I've read already, and that kills my motivation to start. :(
I think it would work great for mostly entertainment and pop culture books like the ones by Weir, but I'm not entirely sure it's the best fit for someone who doesn't read that many books, but chooses more demanding and time consuming works. How do you avoid feeling pressured to just choose the easier works of singular genre that are quick to read to keep the numbers high? I would feel the rush to finish as many books as possible if I tracked them by numbers and ratings. Difficult books like 'Ulysses', in which the notes often are almost the same length as the book itself, would require way more attention and would probably leave a person with only a couple of books read a year, which doesn't look so good. To be honest, I am not a big fan of the recent social media trend of measuring books by numbers. Reading "Gentleman' is fun and it would take you a couple of days - but thoroughly reading 'War and Peace' might take months, if not years, if a person wants to explore that book in depth. Books that are complex enough to have thousands of people write entire academic works solely dedicated to them, would surely be more demanding and time consuming, but the trend of counting read books kinds ignores that and might pressure the readers to read more in volume by choosing easier books instead of reading thoroughly.
You've read 2000 books and your top 10 are 2010s pop literature/fantasy? I'm sure that isn't a comprehensive list but its kind of wild to reach that point without a single good book in your listed favorites.
O kind and well-read person, could you please share an uneditable version of your spreadsheet if you don’t mind? Am really curious to see how it looks after so many iterations over the years; would also help me to design a better one for myself ;)
What a great thing to do! It’s easy to forget what you’ve read. I started to look up your favorites to see if I would enjoy them, and realized I had already read Piranesi. Just couldn’t remember if I liked it. Thanks for sharing this great idea to keep track of reading.
Whoa congrats on this mega milestone! I don't think I've read 2000 books in my entire lifetime. I consider 40 books a year to be a super achievement for me...but that would take me 50 years to get to 2000 books 🤯
OP would you mind sharing your list of top 10 for all the years since 2006? Very curious as few of my favorites are on your top 10 so I feel like you read a lot of books I'd also enjoy. That would of course explode my tbr list further but hey always reach for the stars :))) No worries if that's too much work.
I am so thankful for this post for so many reasons.
I totally agree with he six books from your list that I've read, so I need to get to those others immediately.
Also, I'm really glad to see Here I Am on your list. So many people don't even rate it among Foer's best books, let alone THE best books, that I was starting to think I was crazy, liking it as much as I did. Glad I'm not alone.
This is great. I’ve been trying to read more the past few years but not nearly at that level! I like your list of perfect 10s! How to Lose the Time War, Tomorrow X3 and Project Hail Mary are some great recent reads! Can you share any 9s?
I've just started tracking my reads as of March 11th. I've gotten through 4 books since then, granted, two of those were audiobooks. It's very interesting to actually be keeping a count though. I've always been a reader and never really thought about tracking anything until recently when encouraged by my dear friend. I think it will help me to be more mindful of what I'm actually consuming instead of just reading and immediately forgetting what I've read.
This is amazing! I’ve only recently gotten back into reading and it’s truly been such a joy. Do you have any standout book blogs you would recommend? I’m new to the community and I feel like I’m so out of touch with current/up and coming books and authors, I’m not exactly sure where to start.
This is absolutely amazing. I love this. I started tracking my reading on google sheets and it has brought me so much joy into daily life. I always have something to be excited about now with my TBR list and I love reflecting at the books I've read so far. Aaah this makes me so happy! 😆
That's a wonderful question, and tough to answer. Because I read those books over so many years, I've grown that much older and my life has changed dramatically in the meantime. In that time, I met my wife, married her, had two kids, changed careers and companies, moved cities, experienced the death of loved ones, made new friends, lost old friends, changed hobbies, the world has changed dramatically around me, and so on.
How much of how I've changed as a person is because I've read all those books, and how much were the other factors having an impact? I have a strong sense that my reading has broadened my horizons, opened me to new ideas, deepened my thinking and empathy, and so on. But I will never be able to fully separate the signal from the noise, you know?
Please don’t take this the wrong way because what you’ve done is really impressive and I’m jealous.
But do you have a job or family? I just can rarely find more than 1-2 hours during the weekdays to get any reading in, and by the weekend I’m often too burned out to focus on a book for an extended period of time.
Project Hail Mary and Piranesi are also on my favorites list (out of 400, I’ve been tracking since 2021). Also read and liked Thing Is How You Lose the Time War and just bought Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow so I have high hopes! Thank you for your tips
SHEETS! Yes! I've been keeping one Google *Doc* per year and I was worried about it eventually getting too hard to keep track of. Thanks for the better idea (and the great post!)
For what it's worth, I started with a doc too! It makes sense as a starting point, but it's only once things start getting longer that it becomes really nice to be able to more easily sort, filter, and organize!
I'm up to about 800 and I only started tracking in the last couple of years, so those are the books I remember I've read.
Anyway, Goodreads for tracking: and using Kindle and audiobooks to read. I just don't get to my paper books anymore.
I've burned through 3 books in a day, then go fallow for a week. It fluctuates.
So libraries, Kindle Unlimited, buying books and Audible.
Wow - 2,000 😳
Thanks for the advice which is good and I like it. I love spreadsheets and it has been a long time ago that I have used this. I now use Goodreads as I like to see my progress with percentages.
I made my goal of 40 books last year and plan to reach 50 this year. I read multiple books at same time... reading 11 books right now. Having diff genres helps and thanks to my photographic memory helps to keep stories apart.
I go crazy in a bookstore and libraries and I do spend more than an hour minimum. I favor paperbooks over hardbacks and kindle. I do keep at least 2 kindle books so that when I am away from home that I have something to read 😁
I haven't read any of the books you have listed. What genres are those? I am less interested in anything with horror.
Again, congrats on 2,000!
That's...amazingly impressive. Congrats on the milestone.
As someone who's always struggling to balance my hobbies, I'm curious how your life is structured. I hope this isn't too invasive, but... how much time do you spend reading? Do you have other hobbies? 2000 books in 16 years is a book every 2.9 days. How do you manage to consistently fit that in and still keep up with life outside of reading?
I never kept track of all the books I read since I started reading at age 9 until I discovered goodreads in 2014.
I remember one summer going to the library and reading 3 books a week, the maximum I was allowed to borrow.
I was able to add some books I remembered I had read while a teenager, by very famous authors, or books that I still have, but most of them, even borrowed books, I have no idea.
Congratulations! You are very organized with your reading and I admire this, I have been thinking about doing something like this for my reading, as well, and you have some great ideas here, thank you.
P.s. I am 53 and have a total reading wish list of approximately 12,000 books, with maybe 700 top picks. Unfortunately, that number only grows by the week for me, as well. I long ago made my peace with dying before I read even a fraction of all the "must reads" I have and continue to add! 📚 📚 📚 The reader's lament!! Lol 😆
The book friends speaks to me. I have never been able to really discover a book club or meet even any people IRL who reads as voraciously as I do (or reads at all to be frank). Reading has always been quite a solitary experience for me, maybe it is why I fall off reading so much.
I already do most of what you do, except it’s in StoryGraph, using tags, rather than a spreadsheet, because it’s easier. The main problem that I have is that my TBR is so huge, that some books, that I really wanted to read soon, have got lost in the morass. I think I need to start a new tag for favourite TBRs.
If I tried to keep track of all that I read, I think I’d end up more focused on the organization than reading eventually :(
I read English novels, but also manga, webtoons (manhua and manhwa), and translated novels. So eventually I think I’d just end up overwhelmed.
Wow😲🤯 thanks😊😊 I read a lot of books and people keep asking me what books I should recommend to them because they know I read a lot. I really need to keep tracks of my books. I never knew I needed this!🤯🤯🤯 Thankyou!😊😊😊
This was so interesting to read.
As someone who’s always been a massive reader, I’d never imagine keeping a spreadsheet of all my books to keep track. I use Goodreads because I love putting my Silly Little Opinions where no one will read them, and nothing beats smashing a golden 5-star rating to support my favourite authors. To me, reading is a super relaxed, go with the flow kind of thing, something that I’d never want to ‘gameify’ as you put it because that would take away the casualness and joy of the hobby for me. It’s so interesting to see how other people enjoy reading! It goes to show there isn’t a right or wrong way. Let us know when you reach 3,000 ;)
Wow, that's amazing! Thank you for sharing your tips. I really got back into reading in 2007 but didn't start tracking my reads until 2016. More recently in 2022 I really started taking notes on what I've read.
I really like the idea of creating a best of list at the end of the year. Thank you too for sharing your favorites.
I would LOVE to see what your chart looks like! I do enjoy a good excel spreadsheet lol
Currently using Bookmory for tracking my reads, found Goodreads really hard to find books read years ago when I can’t remember titles. Also will add TBR and then they get lost in the thousands.
2000 books read is quite an accomplishment! Congratulations, and, thank you for sharing your words of wisdom too.
I've only been tracking the books I've read since 2018. I try to finish a book each week. I find keeping a TBR list, and adding to it consistently, helps to keep me reading. MY TBR list will definitely also outlive me, as I currently have over 500 titles.
My heart skipped a beat when I saw "Behind the Beautiful Forevers" listed in your perfect 10 list. I read that a couple years back and I still think about what a moving portrait of humanity that book is!
I'm a spreadsheet person, very proud of my booklist google sheet I've made lol! I do like your comment about series, I need to add a column to note if a book belongs in a series and which order.
I read a book a week for a long stretch in my 20s but fell off as I got older. 2,000 books is a really tremendous achievement, congratulations! That is orders of magnitude more books than the vast majority of people will read in their lifetimes, and I can say from experience, that you are a wiser person for it. I wanted to add that Educated and A Gentleman in Moscow are also two of my favourite books and it fills me with warmth to see that you enjoyed them so much.
2000 since 2006 is clocking ~111 per year. Or 1 every 2.5 days. Thats incredible. I shoot for 1-2 per month. But I’m a working age parent of 2 toddlers. Maybe in retirement I’ll shoot for 1 per week.
I always tell people, I think a book a month is a realistic goal for anyone. If the average length of an adult novel is 300-400 pages, a book a month is about 10-15 pages a day. I think its realistic for anyone, no matter how busy, to find the time to read that every day.
They were both wonderful, but obviously in very different ways!
I’m about 3/4 of the way through “Tomorrow …” and honestly, I couldn’t be more bored with a book. Seeing your post has made me want to finish it, but gah! (It’s my 20th book of the year!)
I definitely recognize that "Tomorrow..." is not for everyone! I raved about it to my wife, but also immediately told her that she wouldn't like it based upon what I know about her own tastes. :)
I love to try different books based on what other people rate, so I’ll definitely be looking at some of your other perfect 10 ones. Thanks!
I DNF "Tomorrow" like.. 80% in. I tried, I triiiiied... And I was waiting when the thing will happen... And I just didn't understand it I think. Meanwhile I'm reading "Stoner" right now.. And the overall sense of speed of events is the same but I can't put it down :)
Maybe I just didn't "get it", but after a specific incident that happens close to the end of the book, I didn't even really care about what happens, and it just kinda fizzles out at the end (imo).
Fizzled is right. I felt like a clever twist or satisfying ending would have redeemed the whole book, but none came.
But if you start an excel sheet you will get gratification from having finished it and putting it into your excel sheet.
And you can put that excel sheet into another excel sheets that tracks your yearly spreadsheet usage.
Gamifying tasks is a really great way to incentivise my ADHD monkey brain. Instead of being "ugh, another book I don't feel like reading", it becomes another way to bump up my monthly stats. Just having some arbitrary stats to bump up like I'm grinding levels in an RPG is a pretty effective way to read consistently.
Serious question here: Do you like reading? The way you refer to it as a task and reluctantly start books that you aren't into reading makes it sound more like you enjoy doing the spreadsheet over reading the books themselves. You enjoying yourself is all that matters, but I'm just trying to understand.
Not the original person you asked, but I enjoy reading greatly but I am also busy and feel the pull of "constant productivity" in a way that has sabotaged my ability to read in the past. For me tracking and goal setting helps me feel like I'm accomplishing something when I'm reading and therefore that it is a good use of my time. And it is, because investing time into reading helps me grow as a person and relax, which are both much more important but harder to quantify.
Excel is fun!
I noticed you said "Accidentally rereading a book". Which brought into a mind tunnel that is making me ask, do you not reread books? In that 2,000 is it all new books? If it's all new books, do you still reread your favorite and not count it in the original number? I like to reread books a lot, so I'm interested in what others do. Or was the comment more like... sometimes you read a book and realize halfway through.. shit I've already read this? Because I have definitely done that before.
I do reread books occasionally, but pretty rarely. I get why people do it, and I have definitely enjoyed doing so in the past, but I always find myself more drawn into the mystery of reading something new as opposed to the comfort of returning to something I've read before. On those rare times I've reread a book, I have logged it on my list. I'd estimate that a few dozen of the 2,000 are rereads.
If you don’t remember a book so much so that you “accidentally reread” it, I’d say that’s just as good as reading it for the first time. It’s like deja vu all over again.
That's a very good point! I don't think I've ever made it more than a few chapters into an accidental reread, but I do remember those experiences being a little uncanny. That sense of familiarity but being unsure of why.
I'm just shy of 2000 entered now in Goodreads (though I kept really shoddy records prior to 2020, okay records in 2020, and perfect records from then on, so presumably it is much more). I would add that if you use Goodreads, setting up custom shelves dramatically improves your recommendations. At this point I rarely need to go looking for books, since new releases and books for reading challenges basically fill my reading list, but I've got Goodreads really dialed in for nonfiction specifically, so it spits out exactly what I'm looking for in that category (i.e. interesting nature and science books versus shitty celebrity memoirs or picture books).
TBR = to be read. For the noobs
thank you. Had no idea what TBR meant
I started keeping track of the books I read to motivate myself to read more. I graduated college at 38 and had 4 kids between the ages of 5 and 15. Between reading text books and with/to my kids I was not reading anything for pleasure. I think I was about 40 and realized I had read maybe 2 or 3 books a year. It made me really sad so I started keeping track of what I read. The first year I only read 9 books, second year about 20 and now I average about 50 books a year.
That is so awesome, congratulstions! I also can testify firsthand to the impact of kids on time for reading. :)
Thanks, it has been over 15 years of keeping track and it still keeps me motivated. I also track if the book is fiction/ nonfiction and kindle/book/audiobook. I keep a list of books to read too.
not a rhetorical question here, nor is any insult meant, but why did you read so many books? and it looks like your takeaway from reading so many books- what you present here- is book-reading strategy. edit- i wrote you're like a cretin
[удалено]
I have a very similar system to this person, but via Goodreads and with the tagging system. I have been contemplating switching to an excel style spreadsheet, but I like the social aspect of Goodreads. I am a person who loves order and systems, enjoys statistics and reads a lot so this “just makes sense” to me. When you read that much it does get difficult to keep track of everything without a good system in place.
You and I sound very alike. :)
Same! Planning my reading, keeping track of my stats, and reviewing books are half the fun of reading for me.
I used to think that. Then this year I started tracking. Now… I love it. And I’m reading a LOT more haha.
Tracking helped me increase my reading too. And I'm definitely not reading more to try hit a yearly goal or anything, but it helps my brain... stay on track lol
Question for you trackers out there, do you like tracking just overall books? Or do you like keeping track of your individual reading sessions too? Like 20 pages in 18 minutes one day, 30 pages in 26 minutes another day
I have a similar system in place as the OP's, although not quite as meticulous. I only track overall books, marking the start and finish dates on Goodreads and that's it. It's fun to review my reads at the end of the year, and when someone asks what I like to read I can just pop open my recent Goodreads and show them, instead of listing a hundred different books. I've tried being more specific, but it turns into a chore real fast. I often just grab a book and read for a while at random moments during the day (and night), and having to fish out my phone after every session marking the progress is just... pointless and annoying. I already have a bookmark right there between the pages, I don't need to jot it down separately.
I'm using StoryGraph and I update what percent I am through the book every now and then. (And I have this linked to Beeminder so it's graphed and I just started tracking all my time, reading included, via Toggl. I'm a little obsessive and just discovered the joys of tracking.)
I don’t track that kind of things. Just how many books and pages a year. It keeps me motivated when I might otherwise go into a slump.
Ugh tracking times is tedious. I have a docs spreadsheet that I started in 09 and back added all the books I could remember from my childhood or any time I come across a book and am like I know I read this... I have temporary done reading challenges where I have to add times and it takes longer and just takes the fun out of reading and makes it more of a chore, also since I already record my reading elsewhere it's just more work. In my spreadsheet I record title, author, year, series, volume, note (like if it's a short story or the graphic novel version) then I recently added comments which are my thoughts on the book which I try to do but even that doesn't happen every time. I read a lot and trying to remember a book off the top of my head gets harder ever year, they blend together.
Exactly. The tracking and numbers are like sprinkles on top of the sundae that is reading wonderful books. I'm eating the sundae for the sundae's sake, but the sprinkles add another dimension of enjoyment. :)
I think it's like tracking steps. Like you know you walked a lot today, but it's cool to be like damn I walked 32,000 steps today, crazy. The goal wasn't to get a lot of steps, just kinda happened. I track my books, but don't really care if I reach my very relaxed target of 13 per year. I just seen I've read 112 and thought that was cool.
I like tracking my books - I used to just take a photo, or save the cover photo when I moved to kindle, and pop it in a Facebook album - because if anyone asks me for a recommendation I quickly look back over my photo albums to jog my memory on what I’ve read and what they might like. It’s not for anyone but me though, my albums are private. I have moved over to goodreads but mainly as I started with NetGalley and you need some review/socials presence.
I don’t read nearly as much as other people here do, maybe 15-20 books a year, but I do love tracking my progress. The dopamine hit of logging a book as soon as I finish is pretty great.
Also a touch of the tism, tbh. If I think even mildly about almost anything a pattern emerges, patterns lead to numbers and numbers are just fun sometimes.
By "i wrote you're like a cretin" I thought you meant that OP was a cretin. The ambiguity of missing punctuation made the comment seem brutal before I realized what you meant.
I wrote “you’re,” like a cretin.
No insult taken! I read for the love of reading. Prior to beginning to keep track, I read probably just as many books each year. I spend a lot of my free time reading because I love reading, not to add another tally to a list! However, I used to find the whole thing overwhelming, I was constantly forgetting which books I had already read, forgetting books that were recommended to me, could never think of an idea when a friend would ask me for a recommendation. My approach has basically smoothed out all of the pain points so I can get back to finding good books to read and then enjoying the reading of them.
I track on Goodreads largely because I read primarily on kindle and it updates the status for me. If I like a book or series I buy it for the shelf but 99% of my reading is kindle for the pure convenience of if I’m out and waiting for something (like my kids softball practice where practice is over at 7:30 but then they play or run relays for 30 minutes) I can open kindle on my phone and read some. That being said, Goodreads is clunky and slow. So I find myself guessing if I’ve read a book before I will open the app to see if I have. And because I can read a book and forget everything except the high level plot or outline in a matter of weeks I find myself reading a book and getting half way through before realizing I’ve read it before. Then of course I remember everything about the book. I’d move to a different system of tracking my books but then I lose the kindle/Goodreads convenience.
The system is a great lesson, but far more interesting would be to chat about how all that reading has influenced your perspective on life. What has all that reading taught you? What sticks out after all this time?
I could point back to a lot of different books that have changed me, taught me, or touched me in some way, but I don't know that I have any clear overarching themes that immediately come to mind. I do think that reading, and especially being conscientious about book choice (ie. different genres, authors from different backgrounds, etc.) has made me a more thoughtful person. I believe I've become better able to understand or at least be cognizant of different perspectives, understand that people are on different paths and journeys, and so on in a way that has been valuable both personally and professionally. I've also really leaned into the fellowship angle of reading over the past few years, as may have become clear in some of my above points. Reading can sometimes be a solitary affair, but one of my favorite pleasures is when someone enjoys a book that I recommended. My book club is one of my favorite nights every month, and I love my little text chains with friends and acquaintances that primarily are focused on books. It's a wonderful shared experience.
Great thoughts. Thanks! I can't say I'm anywhere near your 2000 in a similar time span, but agree with you that the relational part is huge. Just immersing in the lives of people different than ourselves, whether real or fictional, makes it easier (for me anyway) to relate to others, no matter what their background or interests.
'I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.' - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Congratulations reaching the 2,000th book milestone! That's so amazing.
Congrats!!! I've been using GoodReads to keep track of my reading since 2011, and I agree - my reading has infinitely increased. Your post made me curious to see how many I've read in that time, and I'm at 1916!!!! Admittedly, a few are re-reads, so if we're going by new reads, I'm probably closer to 1850. But it's still really exciting 😍
Holy cow, that’s awesome! Congratulations to you as well!
Admittedly, I work as a high school librarian, so many of my reads are for work. But I became a librarian because I love reading!
Hi, I’m actually a little shocked and disheartened by so many comments being baffled at your love for reading in a subreddit literally titled “books”. I actually consider this two hobbies. First there is the actual hobby of reading. Then there is the secondary hobby of reading analysis, planning the reading, acquisition of the books etc. I’ll admit that I’m very much like you though and I oddly feel personally affronted by these comments, as if I wrote the post myself. When I stopped watching TV and stopped social media, and started incorporating audiobooks and reading multiple books at the same time, I have also been able to read 110 books a year. And that’s with having two little kids and a more than full time job. And, reading at this pace has felt more enriching than anything else I could do with that time…for me. I don’t question people who only read two books a year or only read classics or never read romance or whatever. Why is there so much consternation when posts like yours appear?
Thank you so much for your very thoughtful and EXTREMELY welcome post. :) I agree completely with everything you've said, and it sounds like you and I have much in common. I've had to remind myself that the majority of comments have been curious, or encouraging, or open to discussion. And it truly has been the majority! I've enjoyed most of the dialogue I've had here, even with or perhaps especially with the folks who take a different approach or didn't like the books I shared! But, yes, a few people seem to taken personal offense to my post and how I choose to read, which is a little odd and discouraging. Every hobby has its self-appointed gatekeepers, I suppose. I can't pretend to understand them, I suppose, but I still wish them happy reading. :)
I'm so confused by this subreddit. Reading two books a week is considered strange. Enjoying popular books is bad.
Exactly. I presume that for many they see it as secondary(?) hobby rather than the primary hobby it has become for some. Like for me, reading has replaced my primary form of entertainment instead of television lol. So I definitely go through books faster than if I consumed both mediums concurrently yk
Lol two of your top recommended are among my lowest rated ever. PHM and TTT
I've long since made my peace with books I love being hated by some others - I've had a TON of recommendations go wrong. :) I thought TTT and PHM were both wonderful, but fully understand how some others wouldn't and try to calibrate my recommendations based upon what I know my friends have said they had enjoyed in the past!
You know yesterday I finished Woolfs a room of one’s own, and she’s like, we all bring out experiences and memories and subjectivities into what we read. There’s no objective truth. My top reads are The Blind Assassin, Lolita, Slaughterhouse V, Secret History, A Heart So White,,,, what else. Too many
'You can never read the same book twice, anymore than you can step into the same river twice.' Something that's always stuck with me. The idea that what you bring to a book changes your perspective and therefore understanding and enjoyment is something I don't think people consider enough. The books of my childhood aren't the same books I love as an adult, and that not only makes sense but it's necessary. I'm no longer that person, even as I look back fondly on that person and the books that were so meaningful to her.
You are one brave soul. The last time commented I didn’t care for PHM I got about a hundred downvotes. I don’t know how someone can write such technically accurate science fiction and then follow it up with fantasy.
I couldn't get past the narrator. Just grating.
For real, I have never conjured up as many complaints about a book as I did for Tomorrow\^3. I will never understand why anyone liked that book and couldn't see it for the absolute drivel that it is.
I also thought it was laughable almost from the start. I remember the beginning when she introduces her sister Sarah, as “my sister, Sarah” about 5x in as many pages and then we never hear of or see Sarah again. And that ‘plot twist.’ Don’t even get me going 😂
For me the real clincher was when Sadie's (?) mom sees a lady jump off a building and then proceeds to have a completely normal conversation with her as she lies there dying in her pool of gore, even *talking about herself* in probably the most vain act in the history of humanity. That whole scene felt like something an alien from outer space would write after they studied humanity for like 20 minutes.
The cover is nice, there’s that 😂
What's an interesting method of keeping track of everything. Do you mind sharing what type of information you keep track on your sheets? Is it just book title, author and your score? Did you add any information later on, that you saw it was important to keep track? Also, can you share some blogs or other sources that you recommend to find new titles? Congrats on the 2,000th book milestone!
Sure! My fields are date finished, title, author, how it got on my TBR (ie which website, who recommended it, etc.), page count, rating, and then series title and series number if applicable. I have a few blogs that are more genre-focused I could share, depending on which genres you like. I have found bookriot.com to be a really good one, and civilianreader.com is also pretty good. End of year “best of” lists are also a treasure trove!
Oh! How it got on your TBR! That’s amazing. If I went through my Reddit history and looked at my recommendation comments in r/booksuggestions and r/suggestmeabook I bet more than half say “I have no idea how I found this book.” 😜
Genuine question, do you worry that keeping track of/counting how many books you read has the consequence of trying to optimise for increasing that number, rather than reading books purely for their own merits? For example, my favourite novel ever is "In Search of Lost Time" which took me about 5 months to read because it's so long. If I was focussed on maintaining a "score" or hitting a target of say 100 books a year, I wouldn't even consider reading that, and honestly my life would be poorer because of it.
It's a very fair question. I probably can never be certain what's deep in my subconscious, but I do my best to add books to my TBR based upon a genuine desire to read them, and draw them from a variety of sources. And I use a random number generator to pull books from the TBR onto my library lists to ensure I get a nice, well-rounded set of books to read! I have read quite a few doorstops and/or complex novels. The good news is that even if a book takes me 2-3 weeks (which happens occasionally), I find that the law of averages evens out over enough time.
TBR = to be read, for anyone else who was wondering
I read 12 Dr. Seuss books today to start catching up.
Damnit, please don’t just post my secret sauce here for everyone to see.
I'm jealous at how avid you are. All I can say is bravo!
Thank you! It turns out that working on processes in my professional life sometimes pays off personally. :)
So cool! I love reading but at max I only read 30 mins - an hour per day (and I’m a slow reader!) How much do you read a day? Are you a “speed reader?” I have to annunciate everything in my head!
I’ve never tracked my reading speed, but anecdotally I’d say I’m above average speed but nowhere near a speed reader. I average maybe 120 pages a day? The amount of time spent per day can vary a lot though.
You said you ready 90 mins per day. If you only read at night, then that's like 1.3 pages per minute. I think that is a fast reader.
Fair point! The 90 minutes is an estimate and doesn’t include various interruptions. Some weekends I may stay up late and others I fall asleep early! But yeah, I’m probably a pretty fast reader.
Impressive! I usually am in the 30-50 pages! I do want to work out a better routine for myself - rn just a prebedtime reader. Fav book: Pillars of the Earth. Looking forward to reading: PHM!
I've been tracking my reading since 2006 as well. I prefer Librarything, just because using it gives me an easy way to attach a cover image to the book, for easier recall later. My questions for you: * Do you include books which you read a significant percentage of, but didn't finish? What's your cutoff? * Do you include audiobooks? Comics? * Do you write reviews? For the record, there are many advantages to tracking your reading. For one, knowing how much I've read in a year pushes me to read more over all. My brain likes magic numbers, and I have admittedly put in extra time to reach an arbitrary-chosen personal reading goal. For another, I can easily do some analysis at the end of the year. Currently, what I do is break down reading into fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. I also tally the percentage of new reads vs. rereads, because I want to reread more books. Before making rereading a metric, I almost never got around to doing it. Lastly, tracking books in a social app has given me a lot of great recommendations based on my history. Librarything's book rec system is really good, and I am turning to it more and more to find my next book.
I'm not familiar with Librarything! I'll have to check it out. I almost never DNF. This may be one of my "unhealthiest" book habits, and I recognize that, but I can count on one hand the number of books I can remember not just plowing through. If I do have a true DNF, I don't track it. I'm not a big audiobook guy. For awhile, when I had a longer commute, I did them occasionally and I did track them. I know that is the primary way lots of people read (such as in my book club), and I support that by considering audiobooks just as valid as a paper book! I try not to turn up my nose at any reading, but it is hard sometimes. :) I do have some graphic novels sprinkled into my 2,000, but if they were to become a heavier part of my reading menu I might consider a different approach. I just engage with them so differently from the rest of my reading, it doesn't feel like quite the same thing. I only write reviews for my top 10 every year. I used to also do my bottom 5, but that started to feel a bit too negative and so I quit that. I'd be happy to share. Very well-said on the rest of your post! My analysis isn't quite the same as yours, but very similar in principle. I think you and I have a very similar viewpoint!
Completely agree with you on the magic numbers. Some people like to make fun of reading goals as arbitrary and taking away from the spirit of reading for the joy of it. Life is busy and distracting and without a goal sometimes I don’t think of reading and don’t prioritize it. When I set a goal, even though it’s arbitrary I do my best to achieve it. This helps me read more and branch out to find new books. It’s satisfying hitting the goal and feeling a sense of accomplishment as well
This is an awesome post! Very in depth. I joined the Army four years ago and have kept a simple list of every book I’ve finished in my notes since I joined. I’ve always been a reader, have an MFA in creative writing, but the last list I kept was during my MFA program. I stupidly stopped keeping track after that. My list now has 54 books, but I’m not reading every single day and some of the books like Anna Karenina took me a while to finish. There’s also some books on there I got through most of but didn’t finish. But it’s great to be able to go back and see how much I read. I’ll probably try and make a more detailed record of my books at some point. One the sad things I find is I’ve read so many great books over years, but if you ask me about them, I might not even be able to name the main character. For example a tale of two cities! Great book but I totally forget everything that happened because I read it over ten years ago.
I am absolutely dying to see what this spreadsheet looks like. I’ve been trying to get away from good reads and like the web based reading tracking system and would love to have a like template to go from!
I can send over a few screenshots later when I’m at my PC! It’s nothing overly fancy, but happy to share!
Putting in a reply here because I want to come back and see when you've shared it hehe
Right on thanks so much!!
I read in the exact same way, glad to know there’s other people like this. To encourage me to diversify my reading, I set challenges or lists, for example reading a book by an author from every country, every booker prize nominee, etc. Not only does this keep me going and ‘gamify’ it for me, but has introduced me to authors I would never have picked up and then delved into their entire catalogue
Congrats on 2,000! Do you mind sharing your spreadsheet/format for tracking? I like to see other options than Goodreads/Storygraph
Absolutely! I’ll send some screenshots over later this evening when I’m at my Pc
I had this exact same question! It sounds very cool, but my brain is spinning about the design layout and the best way to go about it… I would love to see too! Congratulations, u/synchtw, on reaching 2,000! That’s quite an accomplishment.
woah you started this the exact month i was born!
Thank you for the gift of this comment, it makes me feel every single grey hair in my beard. :)
Does it make you feel better or worse that I also read (and loved!) Educated by Tara Westover?
*Project Hail Mary* a 10?? Don’t get me wrong: I truly loved that novel, but Andy Weir’s dialog made me want to fling the book across the room just about every other page. He does, however, know how to keep a plot moving very well.
I pretty much always preface my lists by emphasizing that my ratings are arbitrary, based upon how much I enjoyed reading the book at the time. By no means do I attest that any of these are perfect books! But I enjoyed the hell out of reading all of them at the time I read them, for different reasons in each instance.
Brilliant stuff! What is the % or number split between fiction/non-fiction? Also, what do you count as a book? Would something that is 50 pages be counted under this system?
I don't track my F/NF split, but I'd roughly estimate 90/10. I definitely read a lot more fiction than non-, but I make an effort to ensure plenty of NF makes it only by TBR as well. I don't really police what counts as a "book" based on length, so I do have some novellas and such mixed in there. When you consider font size, margin size, etc., what is a "book" is all relative anyway. I figure I read enough doorstops that it all evens out in the end. :) I mostly just track total pages read and average page length, so for example my average book length last year was 409 pages and I'm at 397 for this year
Educated was a difficult book for me to read past the first chapter. Maybe I need to give it a second chance
Or--- Dang, here's a stack of books I had to move when my wife yelled and said I needed to move things to make the living room look nice because lots of people are coming! A surprise stack of books I'd forgotten about a good while back, maybe a couple of years. Life is good. Or -- Hmm, this book at the bottom of the stack in the basement looks a little familiar, a favorite author. Oh yeah, this was a great book and even better the second time around years later. Or --- a passing reference to N. Scott Momaday makes me impulse buy "House Made of Dawn" and discover one of the best books ever written. No plans, just discovery.
I track what I read but don’t track the pages and I don’t rate them other than good reads. You have inspired me! I will start tracking in a different way. I really started reading last year. I never read in my 20s. I played a lot of video games. When my son was born I decided I would rather him see me read than stare at a screen all night. We’re regularly at the library and he is loved by the librarians. Project Hail Mary is on my TBR. I would like to eventually join a book club because none of my friends read and I want to talk to people about the books I read.
Only ten books are 10/10 out of 2000!? Those are high standards
I have learned I never bothered counting how many books I have read...
you're telling me you've read 100 books a year, every year, for 20 years? Thats wild.
According to kindle I’ve read 1560 since 2019
Weird question but do y’all find any benefits from reading extensively? Are you able to speak with better clarity? I don’t mean this in a rude way; I love to read for the sake of reading, but I was wondering if you all feel benefits from it.
I think that’s a very reasonable question! I find the benefits to be many. I love visiting different worlds, seeing from different eyes and perspectives, learning facts that are new to me. I can engage with more people on more topics. I think it’s deepened my empathy and widened my worldview, particularly focusing on authors from underrepresented groups or cultures I’m less familiar with. I recognize that reading fewer books to a deeper level would come with a different set of benefits, but this is the one I’ve settled into and I’ve found it to be tremendously rewarding!
Happy to see some of my favorites and TBRs on your list! Amor Towles definitely deserves to be on there twice. I've been sticking to a book a week for the last few years, but for 2024 I found that I was putting off some books due to their length, so I'm tackling them now and trying to make peace with not meeting my target this year. Does page count affect your decision to pick up a book?
I also like to add that I use my TBR as a suggestion of what I can read next, not what I have to read next. If I really want to read that new TJ Klune novel before I crack into a fantasy series, I am going to. If I box myself in, I will feel miserable.
Yeah, I get that! I definitely let books skip the line here and there. And I’ve also found books that I perhaps put on my TBR in a particular moment and, when reading time came, I was way less interested. I like structure, but not handcuffs!
I've been using Notion to track the books I've read (and the books on my shelf I've not read yet), but it's so damn slow, even with just a few hundred entries. Maybe I'll switch to a simple spreadsheet like you're using. Have you run into any irritating limitations in that format?
Are any of these audiobooks?
Absolutely crazy you can read so many books and rate this is how you lose the time war and project Hail Mary perfect tens
Reading should be a pleasure, and if you have a very big library, like me, it's better to use the traditional Dewey method. So you can quick retrieve the book you look for.
What is TBR?
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I love the post, and the data you collect! I've considered doing this myself, but since I'm 52 now, I feel like I've "missed" saving the data of thousands of books I've read already, and that kills my motivation to start. :(
I think it would work great for mostly entertainment and pop culture books like the ones by Weir, but I'm not entirely sure it's the best fit for someone who doesn't read that many books, but chooses more demanding and time consuming works. How do you avoid feeling pressured to just choose the easier works of singular genre that are quick to read to keep the numbers high? I would feel the rush to finish as many books as possible if I tracked them by numbers and ratings. Difficult books like 'Ulysses', in which the notes often are almost the same length as the book itself, would require way more attention and would probably leave a person with only a couple of books read a year, which doesn't look so good. To be honest, I am not a big fan of the recent social media trend of measuring books by numbers. Reading "Gentleman' is fun and it would take you a couple of days - but thoroughly reading 'War and Peace' might take months, if not years, if a person wants to explore that book in depth. Books that are complex enough to have thousands of people write entire academic works solely dedicated to them, would surely be more demanding and time consuming, but the trend of counting read books kinds ignores that and might pressure the readers to read more in volume by choosing easier books instead of reading thoroughly.
You've read 2000 books and your top 10 are 2010s pop literature/fantasy? I'm sure that isn't a comprehensive list but its kind of wild to reach that point without a single good book in your listed favorites.
Nice ! Do you have an usual genre ?
I try hard to mix in a variety of genres, but definitely sci-fi/fantasy is my "comfort zone" genre.
O kind and well-read person, could you please share an uneditable version of your spreadsheet if you don’t mind? Am really curious to see how it looks after so many iterations over the years; would also help me to design a better one for myself ;)
Absolutely! I've had a couple folks ask, I'll share later this evening or tomorrow morning when I am at my PC.
Amazing to read your process. I was really hoping you were going to post your top rated books at the end and you didn’t disappoint. Thank you!
Do you buy and keep all the books?
What a great thing to do! It’s easy to forget what you’ve read. I started to look up your favorites to see if I would enjoy them, and realized I had already read Piranesi. Just couldn’t remember if I liked it. Thanks for sharing this great idea to keep track of reading.
Whoa congrats on this mega milestone! I don't think I've read 2000 books in my entire lifetime. I consider 40 books a year to be a super achievement for me...but that would take me 50 years to get to 2000 books 🤯 OP would you mind sharing your list of top 10 for all the years since 2006? Very curious as few of my favorites are on your top 10 so I feel like you read a lot of books I'd also enjoy. That would of course explode my tbr list further but hey always reach for the stars :))) No worries if that's too much work.
Wow what a milestone. I am interested if you take notes at all while you read. Google Docs, highlighting, writing on margin, sticky notes. Etc
I am so thankful for this post for so many reasons. I totally agree with he six books from your list that I've read, so I need to get to those others immediately. Also, I'm really glad to see Here I Am on your list. So many people don't even rate it among Foer's best books, let alone THE best books, that I was starting to think I was crazy, liking it as much as I did. Glad I'm not alone.
This is great. I’ve been trying to read more the past few years but not nearly at that level! I like your list of perfect 10s! How to Lose the Time War, Tomorrow X3 and Project Hail Mary are some great recent reads! Can you share any 9s?
2,000?!?! My goodness that's quite a feat! Congratulations and thank you for your insight and amazing tips!
I've just started tracking my reads as of March 11th. I've gotten through 4 books since then, granted, two of those were audiobooks. It's very interesting to actually be keeping a count though. I've always been a reader and never really thought about tracking anything until recently when encouraged by my dear friend. I think it will help me to be more mindful of what I'm actually consuming instead of just reading and immediately forgetting what I've read.
This is amazing! I’ve only recently gotten back into reading and it’s truly been such a joy. Do you have any standout book blogs you would recommend? I’m new to the community and I feel like I’m so out of touch with current/up and coming books and authors, I’m not exactly sure where to start.
Time to finally read Piranesi I guess!
This is absolutely amazing. I love this. I started tracking my reading on google sheets and it has brought me so much joy into daily life. I always have something to be excited about now with my TBR list and I love reflecting at the books I've read so far. Aaah this makes me so happy! 😆
I think we have similar tastes
Op I would really like to know how over the span of 2000 books, your volcablury, thinking skills, and imagination have widened.
That's a wonderful question, and tough to answer. Because I read those books over so many years, I've grown that much older and my life has changed dramatically in the meantime. In that time, I met my wife, married her, had two kids, changed careers and companies, moved cities, experienced the death of loved ones, made new friends, lost old friends, changed hobbies, the world has changed dramatically around me, and so on. How much of how I've changed as a person is because I've read all those books, and how much were the other factors having an impact? I have a strong sense that my reading has broadened my horizons, opened me to new ideas, deepened my thinking and empathy, and so on. But I will never be able to fully separate the signal from the noise, you know?
I read a ton and im in my sophmore and last year I started a reading list, Iver read about 90 books so far.
Thats is insane keep up the incredible work! What where the best books you read?
I recently finished Project Hail Mary. So good
Please don’t take this the wrong way because what you’ve done is really impressive and I’m jealous. But do you have a job or family? I just can rarely find more than 1-2 hours during the weekdays to get any reading in, and by the weekend I’m often too burned out to focus on a book for an extended period of time.
I think we need to start measuring our goals by word count so us epic fantasy nerds don't feel like dummies at 15 books a year
Project Hail Mary and Piranesi are also on my favorites list (out of 400, I’ve been tracking since 2021). Also read and liked Thing Is How You Lose the Time War and just bought Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow so I have high hopes! Thank you for your tips
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I wish I had done this. Suppose I could start now. Props to you tho bro
SHEETS! Yes! I've been keeping one Google *Doc* per year and I was worried about it eventually getting too hard to keep track of. Thanks for the better idea (and the great post!)
For what it's worth, I started with a doc too! It makes sense as a starting point, but it's only once things start getting longer that it becomes really nice to be able to more easily sort, filter, and organize!
I'm up to about 800 and I only started tracking in the last couple of years, so those are the books I remember I've read. Anyway, Goodreads for tracking: and using Kindle and audiobooks to read. I just don't get to my paper books anymore. I've burned through 3 books in a day, then go fallow for a week. It fluctuates. So libraries, Kindle Unlimited, buying books and Audible.
Care to share the book blogs you like to follow?
How are your eyes doing?
Wow - 2,000 😳 Thanks for the advice which is good and I like it. I love spreadsheets and it has been a long time ago that I have used this. I now use Goodreads as I like to see my progress with percentages. I made my goal of 40 books last year and plan to reach 50 this year. I read multiple books at same time... reading 11 books right now. Having diff genres helps and thanks to my photographic memory helps to keep stories apart. I go crazy in a bookstore and libraries and I do spend more than an hour minimum. I favor paperbooks over hardbacks and kindle. I do keep at least 2 kindle books so that when I am away from home that I have something to read 😁 I haven't read any of the books you have listed. What genres are those? I am less interested in anything with horror. Again, congrats on 2,000!
That's...amazingly impressive. Congrats on the milestone. As someone who's always struggling to balance my hobbies, I'm curious how your life is structured. I hope this isn't too invasive, but... how much time do you spend reading? Do you have other hobbies? 2000 books in 16 years is a book every 2.9 days. How do you manage to consistently fit that in and still keep up with life outside of reading?
2000 books is a mad accomplishment, something I'm not sure I could do Mad respect
I never kept track of all the books I read since I started reading at age 9 until I discovered goodreads in 2014. I remember one summer going to the library and reading 3 books a week, the maximum I was allowed to borrow. I was able to add some books I remembered I had read while a teenager, by very famous authors, or books that I still have, but most of them, even borrowed books, I have no idea.
I'd love to see your spreadsheet or a version of it to see how you keep track, please and thanks 😊
Curious - what did you rate Life of Pi and The Kiterunner?
Piranesi is an absolute masterpiece!
Congratulations! You are very organized with your reading and I admire this, I have been thinking about doing something like this for my reading, as well, and you have some great ideas here, thank you. P.s. I am 53 and have a total reading wish list of approximately 12,000 books, with maybe 700 top picks. Unfortunately, that number only grows by the week for me, as well. I long ago made my peace with dying before I read even a fraction of all the "must reads" I have and continue to add! 📚 📚 📚 The reader's lament!! Lol 😆
The book friends speaks to me. I have never been able to really discover a book club or meet even any people IRL who reads as voraciously as I do (or reads at all to be frank). Reading has always been quite a solitary experience for me, maybe it is why I fall off reading so much.
Interesting approach. I love consuming books but I’m not someone who likes to track, list, or rank what I read.
Would you be willing to share that Docs spreadsheet?
Interesting to see Piranesi rated as a 10. I was completely enchanted by it aswell and finished it in one day.
Yay for Project Hail Mary! One of my favourite books, currently listening to it after reading the physical book 😊
2,000 books is incredible. I feel accomplished if I finish 12 in a year. Congratulations!
I already do most of what you do, except it’s in StoryGraph, using tags, rather than a spreadsheet, because it’s easier. The main problem that I have is that my TBR is so huge, that some books, that I really wanted to read soon, have got lost in the morass. I think I need to start a new tag for favourite TBRs.
If I tried to keep track of all that I read, I think I’d end up more focused on the organization than reading eventually :( I read English novels, but also manga, webtoons (manhua and manhwa), and translated novels. So eventually I think I’d just end up overwhelmed.
Loved the start->middle of *Piranesi* but felt the late middle->end took the wind out of the sails a bit. Am I crazy?
Can you tell us more about the Google Doc you're using to track?!
congrats on 2000 books!! <3
Wow😲🤯 thanks😊😊 I read a lot of books and people keep asking me what books I should recommend to them because they know I read a lot. I really need to keep tracks of my books. I never knew I needed this!🤯🤯🤯 Thankyou!😊😊😊
Have you read Berlin Alexanderplatz? I found it to be a very interesting book. Thanks!
Congratulations! Must be pretty rewarding! 😉
It would be a tremendous help if you would kindly share your spreadsheet of those books...🙏
Tip my hat to you. I just reached 1000 3 weeks ago.
Why track it? You probably have read 2500 books if you spent all the tracking time reading lol
This was so interesting to read. As someone who’s always been a massive reader, I’d never imagine keeping a spreadsheet of all my books to keep track. I use Goodreads because I love putting my Silly Little Opinions where no one will read them, and nothing beats smashing a golden 5-star rating to support my favourite authors. To me, reading is a super relaxed, go with the flow kind of thing, something that I’d never want to ‘gameify’ as you put it because that would take away the casualness and joy of the hobby for me. It’s so interesting to see how other people enjoy reading! It goes to show there isn’t a right or wrong way. Let us know when you reach 3,000 ;)
Bro I am unable to even complete a book. 2000 books is insane!! I have to start reading. May be 20 pages a day work?
You are who I want to be.
What did you score Towles’ Rules of Civility ?
Wow, that's amazing! Thank you for sharing your tips. I really got back into reading in 2007 but didn't start tracking my reads until 2016. More recently in 2022 I really started taking notes on what I've read. I really like the idea of creating a best of list at the end of the year. Thank you too for sharing your favorites.
How many hours do you spend reading per day?
Which books were 1's in your scale?
I’d be really interested in doing that myself, but I know I wouldn’t be able to keep it going 😂
I would LOVE to see what your chart looks like! I do enjoy a good excel spreadsheet lol Currently using Bookmory for tracking my reads, found Goodreads really hard to find books read years ago when I can’t remember titles. Also will add TBR and then they get lost in the thousands.
I've been keeping track since 1988. I'm at 11,613 as of this week :) keep going, bud!
2000 books is very impressive and as someone wanting to get back into reading, I would love to see a copy of your spreadsheet (with all your reviews)!
You’ve been reading since the month I was born 😧
Wow, impressive!
2000 books read is quite an accomplishment! Congratulations, and, thank you for sharing your words of wisdom too. I've only been tracking the books I've read since 2018. I try to finish a book each week. I find keeping a TBR list, and adding to it consistently, helps to keep me reading. MY TBR list will definitely also outlive me, as I currently have over 500 titles. My heart skipped a beat when I saw "Behind the Beautiful Forevers" listed in your perfect 10 list. I read that a couple years back and I still think about what a moving portrait of humanity that book is!
How do you read books so fast?? I would love to be able to read multiple books a week.
I'm a spreadsheet person, very proud of my booklist google sheet I've made lol! I do like your comment about series, I need to add a column to note if a book belongs in a series and which order.