I read fewer books last year than the year before. If you count the ones I started and abandoned I read as many, but I don’t think that counts. However, part of the point of allowing myself to abandon books was to free up more time to read books that I would enjoy more. And yet I read fewer books. And several of these were not exactly long books, either. I even counted a web-comic volume, for heaven sake (though come to think of it, I didn’t count the Calvin & Hobbes collection my son gave me for Christmas….Hmmmm…).
I would feel better about that if I’d accomplished more in my writing instead, but I’m still puttering away on what was supposed to be the best, most fun novel I have written to date. I did finish the second draft of the novel I wrote the previous year, but this one has taken far too long for being just over 50k words into it. There are some good moments, to be sure, but it’s been work for the most part, and I’ve nearly given up several times. Will I be a better writer for having persevered and finished it anyway? Beats me.
Twenty-nine books is less than two and a half per month. I suppose in that light it’s not bad. Every month I’d invariably finish an audiobook, so that was a book and a half at the same time. I should be more pleased about that than I am, I suppose.
Or I can stop whining, end this blog post, and go pick up one of the five books I got for Christmas and work on setting a new record this year.
Reading shouldn’t be “work” Thom. If it isn’t giving you the refuge that you want, don’t beat yourself up for not doing it more … let ME beat you up for other stuff.
… for that matter, I can’t recall ever reading that many books in a single year … ever.
Some years are like that. This year I read fewer than normal, too. Way fewer. Like by a factor of 10 almost. But, I did watch more college football, so, yeah, there’s that!
And it provided some father-daughter bonding, so there’s that!