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About how many books would you say you’ve read in the past year?
B. 30 - 100 (This use to be C. verging on D. but not for years. Now it is closer to only 50) -
About how many books would you say you currently own?
E. Over 1200, easy ( I tend to hoard books, they only seem to come in, nearly every room in my house has bookshelves of some sort.) -
About how many books would you say you’ve read in your lifetime (thus far)?
E. Over 2500, easy
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C - I usually read between 100-150 books a year. Would read more if not for pesky job and husband and children.
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E - There are over 1200 books in the house, but some are my husband’s that I haven’t read.
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Probably E - I think I’ve read more than 2500, but I re-read a lot when I was younger, bringing my total count down.
1.) B, at least. I KNOW I go through at least four books per month, which would be 36/year, but I’m certain it’s higher than 36. How much higher, I don’t know.
2.) Easily well beyond the 1200 of E I’ve got 11 bookcases of my own books, most with books stacked two deep and two high (and Pepper Mill and MilliCal each have about three), not to mention about a dozen boxes in the attic.
3.) Again, way beyond the 2500 of E. I read a lot. So do Pepper Mill and MilliCal. MilliCal’s only 11, and has more books than many adults I know.
Number of Books you own: I don’t have room to keep 'em or money to collect 'em, so I’d say more than fifty, less than a hundred.
Number of books you’ve read in the last year: Funny you should ask, since I happen to be counting (over at Goodreads.com, with the Straight Dope group. Y’all should come). Fifty-three, not counting partial reads, re-reads, and audiobooks.
Number of books you’ve read in your life: If I had to estimate, counting books of 150 pages or more, say I read a hundred per year (this year’s been slow, due to time constraints), and starting the count at age 9, and allowing that this year is not finished yet, and I read lots of books multiple times…I’ll say two thousand eight hundred fifty three.
I don’t know how to leave re-reads out of that total, sorry.
B. or C. I’ve kept track since January 1rst and I’ve read 114 books total. 24 of them were either shortish childrens or joke books, or comic strip collections. About half were rereads.
E. Around 1500, counting cookbooks.
I’ve read in the neighborhood of 150 books a year for the last few years. I’m almost 48 years old, and have been a reader for 40 years. 150 X 40 = 6000. that’s a pretty conservative estimate, I think – there have been years (especially when I was a kid) when I read more than 150 books a year. Again, a lot of those will be short books, children’s books & rereads. But definately at least E.
- About how many books would you say you’ve read in the past year?
B. 30 - 100
Probably half of them are text books, as I went back to get my MBA. When I am not in school it is closer to 25, as I read about two books a month. It used to be more but job, kids, spending time with my wife when the first two do not demand attention.
- About how many books would you say you currently own?
B. 50 - 200
Maybe a little more. I have no idea. I get rid of them fairly often. I hate the clutter. I have two large bookshelves to keep my favorites on (or anything that will make me look sophistimacated. The overflow goes to the local library booster sale. Plus, with my Kindle, I’ll buy very few hardcopies in the future.
- About how many books would you say you’ve read in your lifetime (thus far)?
This is tough to decipher. I’ve only recently started keeping tabs. I was inclined to pick the max, but I did some rough math and it isn’t easy to hit that mark. I’ve always enjoyed books, but to get to 2500 would be a stretch for me. I’m 33.5 right now. Let’s say I started reading books over 150 pages when I was in third grade (I read Oliver Twist in 3rd Grade, so I would say that was the start of my literary expansion). So that is about 25 years of reading. I’ve had periods where, for pleasure, I read two books a week and stretches where I read one book a MONTH. So settling on an average of 2.5 books a month sounds reasonable (this is on the back of envelope and straight out of my butt).
That equals 750. (25 YEARS x 12 Mo.s x 2.5 BOOKS/Mo.).
Then lets add in academia.
For pre-high school, I am going to say two books a year for 5 years and just know it is probably more.
So that is 10 books.
I was an honors student in high school (let’s say I averaged 10 books a year for English Lit classes and 5 books a year for everything else.)
That’s another 60.
In college, I was a Political Science major, so most of our work was reading. For everything else, I pretty much skimmed the texts (Science) or do not count it as actual reading (Math). We’ll exclude those. I went with a class by class checklist, but it came out near my wild guess of 10 books a semester.
I estimate another 80.
Law school. Yuck. I feel like I am getting cheated here, as most of the books were 800-1200 pages each. But a book is a book. Gonna say an average of 2.5 “books” per class.
That’s roughly 30 more. (Some long and boring stuff).
My reading from business school is included in my earlier estimate of 2.5 per month (hey, the stuff is interesting!)
Let see what we got.
Total of 930.
So for that, I answer:
C. 800 - 1500
- About how many books would you say you’ve read in the past year?
D. 250 - 500
I average around 5 books per week during non-holiday weeks and during holiday weeks (or any week that includes a three-day weekend or a day off) it’s more like 6 - 7 books.
- About how many books would you say you currently own?
E. Over 1200, easy
This is a guess - I haven’t counted recently - but I have six full-sized (6’ x 3’)bookshelves full to capacity (each shelf filled, most with two rows of books per shelf), two half-sized bookshelves filled to capacity, and at least 150 books piled in random locations that do not fit on the bookshelves.
- About how many books would you say you’ve read in your lifetime (thus far)?
E Over 2500, easy
It’s realistically *at least * double this. Depending upon how one counts (are re-reads counted once or once per reading?), it might well exceed ten times this. If one were to count each individual reading as one book (regardless of re-read), it would not at all surprise me to find myself in excess of 30,000 books. I read a lot. My current pace of 5/week is slacking for me. I’ve had periods of my life wherein I read more than 15/week for years at a stretch. Ages 6 through 18, for starters - my hometown library allowed 15 books at a time, I went once a week every week and limited out every single time - and was often filling in my parents’ and brother’s books towards the end of the week. Georgette Heyer is a strangely interesting read when you’re eight, but Louis L’Amour is for all ages 
I learned to read young and my whole family reads voraciously. My mother’s oft-expressed opinion is that reading never hurt anyone - so my brother and I were pretty much allowed to read anything we could get our little hands on from the time we were functionally literate (in our case, around four) onward. Although, this policy did lead to her doing a whole lot of explaining when we read things with themes and concepts that were a little beyond us. The librarians gave up raising their eyebrows at our choices fairly early. By the time I graduated from high school, I’d worked my way through about 80% of the fiction selection and 40% of the non-fiction selection (mostly biographies, histories, commentaries, etc.).
There were people in my hometown who’d read the entire library.
Past year – I started keeping track in 2005, and manage 50-60 a year
Own – fewer all the time. I used to hoard, er, collect but for the past few years I’ve been giving books away like crazy. I’m probably down to 1,000 and would like to cut that in half. They’re 99% hardcovers and they take up a lot of space.
Lifetime – no clue.
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Probably A. That is sad. I love reading. But it’s been a rough year.
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Probably B. I’d say it’s right around 200. I’ve slowed down some and been using the library more because we have limited space. Once that changes, I imagine it will increase drastically.
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This one’s a little tough. I’ve been reading full books since I was about ten, even though most of them for the first few years were somewhat juvenile subject matter still. I’d estimate somewhere around 600, so B. I’m still relatively young, so I have lots of time to add to it.
It always amazes me to talk to people who don’t read. On most days, there is vey little I would rather do. I’ve always been that way.
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C. I’ve done D some years, never E (not counting children’s books read to my kids.)
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F or G.
I’ve got 2500 sf books, and probably at least that many magazines (I’m in the middle of indexing them) and I’m not counting non-SF books I also own. -
E. Easily, but I’m old and have had more time to read than many of you.
- A. Just haven’t had the time or the interest (most sf and fantasy I see is unimpressive, with the occasional good book shining like gold)
- E Over 1200, easy
- E Over 2500, easy
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A. The Dope has drastically reduced my book reading, and I went through a dry spell, but some years I easily read a book every other day.
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E. I have never (EVER!) gotten rid of a book for any reason. If it falls apart, I replace it ASAP. I’ve got probably close to 5,000 books now, most of them in storage.
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E. I will read anything you put in front of me. Count me in as another who never thought it was unusual to spend all my free time behind a book; quite a shock these days, as I know very few people who read for pleasure.
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b 30-100
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b 50-200
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e over 2500 easy
I have lots of time for reading, have access to a good public library, tend to always have a book handy (eg yesterday I went to a pizza store and ordered at the counter, sat in my car and read for the 20 min it took to get pie)
I’m currently 52 1/2 yrs old, have had my own library card since I was 5, have never been without a library card since that first one.
I just purged a bunch of books because we needed the room.
- B
- D (though some are my ex’s, so my answer may change once my divorce is final)
- E - my high school nickname wasn’t Miss Library for nothing.
I will have to estimate using math.
I read about 20 books a month, but it may have been less in the past. So I’ll say an average of 10 a month. I’ve been reading since age 7, and its 40 years later.
I’ll estimate 4,000.
- d.
- e.
- e.
i’ll be moving the library around the house soon. so i’ll have an exact count soon. i’m considering a kindle to cut down on the paperbacks.