This thread has inspired to go back and catalog as many of the books that I’ve read as I can. This year I’ve read about 15 (and I’ll probably finish somewhere around 20), which I think is pretty good, but some of the people in this thread are frightening me.
If you don’t own books there’s something wrong with you?
Because libraries carry CDs, DVDs and games there’s something wrong with them?
Some people can read a book a day?
A book a day. How is that even physically possible? I mean, I love a good book as much as the next guy, but between my job, my fiance and some of my other interests I doubt I could read a book a week unless I really pushed myself.
So basically what some of the people in this thread are saying is that because I can’t read on the job (and I work at a library!) and because I don’t ignore my fiance I’m a bad reader?
Well, I’m a pretty fast reader for one. For another, I read while I do other things – I read while I cook, and while I bathe, and while I do my hair and makeup… I definately read while I’m waiting on line, or when I’m waiting for my daughter to finish her voice lessons and physical therapy sessions, and so on. And I read most evenings while my husband watches TV – I do watch TV, but not as much as he does. I probably only really follow 5 or 6 shows a week. If my husband is out of town, I stay up late most nights and read in bed. Sometimes it all adds up to a book or more a day. Other times, not so many. When I was single, it was definately at least a book a day – if I wasn’t actually at work or doing something else specifically I was reading. And I read more before we had a computer – the internet definately cuts into my book time.
Well, not reading a book a week doesn’t make you inferior – as I said, my husband doesn’t read at all. But I also wouldn’t call soemone who doesn’t read at least 20 books a year a ‘reader.’ Again, ‘readers’ aren’t better than other people.
And I agree with you about owning books – while I own a lot of books myself, I don’t consider book-ownership to be the mark of a ‘reader.’ I consider books read to be that mark and it doesn’t matter whether you get the books you read from a library, or you buy them and trade them right back in again, or what. Anybody who reads 20 or more books a year is a ‘reader,’ in my mind. My definition of a ‘reader,’ BTW, is someone who, like myself, would rather read than do most anything else. My mom and dad probably read around 10 - 15 books a year. They aren’t ‘readers,’ they are people for whom reading is one of many other hobbies. Nothing wrong with that.
I’m certain I’ve read at least one book a week for the last 25 years. That would put me at 1300 at a minimum. It’s probably two or three times that number.
It’s a poll thread.
That was only a few comments in a 100 post thread.
So yes you are overreacting a little.
This thread largely has habitual readers and collectors.
I am guilty of keeping 1500+ books of all sorts. I have built book shelves ever where. I recently shipped out 50 books and my wife said you can’t even see the difference.
I’m pretty sure I’m D. When I was 14 & home sick (or playing hookey), I made a list of every book I’d ever read. It was nearly 400. But I slowed down the pace once I became really interested in art & my right brain took over, so I probably haven’t topped 700 yet (unless you want to count parenting magazines somehow).
A few thousand. I rarely buy anything anymore because I have no more room. I have boxes of books in my garage, and several bookcases full in my house, so I’ve learned to make liberal use of my library card. I receive books as gifts fairly often, and now & then I read something that I just have to own, so I somehow make space.
If I don’t count my college textbooks, or any novels I was required to read in my high school literature classes, I would estimate I’ve read less than 10 books. And I’m 38.
I was just wondering how I’d count them, but fortunately your categories make it easy. “E”, definitely, for both read and owned. In fact, I moved this year, and I was recently trying to reshelve them. My wife wants to get rid of a bunch. Even with that, once we trade in a bunch, I still expect to own in category “E”.
I’d say E, if you count a book as something over 100 pgs. Ive been reading 200 pg books since 2nd grade (full novels, thankyouverymuch!), and before my house caught on fire a few years ago, I personally owned over 450 books, of which all but 50 were 100+ pages. Granted, my reading has slown down tremendously in the past few months, but Im pretty sure ive reached and surpassed the 700 book mark.
Just want to add a little something to the answer I gave yesterday:
Probably close to a third of the books I own are reference books, art books, or some kind of anthology and therefore not books that I would count as books I have read, since I have not and never will read them cover to cover. I keep them around to refer to or browse at my convenience. So they’re not included in my tally.
More than a thousand: 30 years at one book( of over 100 pages) a week is 1560 books, not counting the 20 times I read The Lord of the Rings. I love the library and the joy of my life is being able to afford going to the bookstore and buying the latest bestseller in hardcover if I want to.
I love books.
When I was small, my goal over the summer was to read my height in books which actually works pretty well.
Currently, I have a rotating stack of about 200 ebooks on my person at all times and about another 1000 - 2000 on my laptop. I read in 5 minute snippets all the freaking time. Envy me.
Although I’ve found lately that the dope has cut a lot into my novel reading. If you add up the raw number of words read, I probably read the equivilant of 1 novel worth of SDMB every day.
My mother, a former kindergarten teacher, had a collection of over 1,200 children’s books in our house. We also had several hundred adult books — art books, medical books, novels, bestsellers, Bellow and Nabokov and Reader’s Digest Condensed Books, three sets of encyclopedias, Mad magazine paperbacks, anything and everything. Plus we made regular trips to the public library. I later became a book editor.
Hey, I’ve weaned myself off of them for the most part and have tried to move onward and upward so as to compete with the smartypants knowitalls that are like cockroaches on this board. I wanna be a cockroach too!
