I am what you might call an enthusiastic reader. My nose is usually buried in a book at any given time of day and I always have one on me. A general piece of sadness that lives inside of me is knowing that I can and will never come close to reading everything worth reading. That being said, I try to just read as much as I physically and emotionally can. Usually, in a given year, I'm reading about 50 books. To me, this is not a lot or a little - feels rather middling depending on who I am talking to at the time. I always knew I wanted to attempt 100 books in a year and I figured 2021 could be that year.
You might be wondering why I didn't attempt this in 2020 when everything was actually shut down and I was working from home part time some of the year. I've also wondered that, but 2020 was actually a terrible reading year for me. I barely made my goal of 50 books and, honestly, my heart just wasn't in it. I'm sure a lot of you felt that way and potentially still do.
I started the year out extremely optimistic (how hard can it be?!). I did fairly well until I hit the summer months and started to drop a bit. Calculating how many more each month I would have to read if I didn't pick up the pace was a bit anxiety inducing. I am definitely a book in hand, loves to turn the pages, kind of reader, but I knew I would not make it if I didn't also listen to some books. I would say I'm a quick reader, but I also have other things that take up time and space in my life (like driving). I listened to more books this year than any other and found I really enjoy it for certain genres (mainly non-fiction and biographies/autobiographies). Having this goal also helped me branch out a bit more to different genres - like poetry!
September and November (I believe) were my biggest reading months. I went full out to try to get ahead. I really wanted to be able to cruise through December knowing I would be so much busier with the holidays. And it worked! I only needed about 3 books to make my 100 goal in December.
Okay, so back to the why I will never set this goal again. While I would absolutely love to read over 100 books a year, it's just not feasible for my natural reading pace. Most of my free time is spent reading, however, I felt like if I was sitting down, I had to be reading. That honestly just takes all the fun out of it for me, feeling like I have to do it. I also don't think I comprehended as much as I normally do. Listening to audio books is wonderful, but I was listening on 2 - 2.5x the normal speed and did I really get everything? Probably not. Some days I would read two 300 paged books in a day. Did I really enjoy it? I don't know. I did read a lot of wonderful books and I'm so glad I did push myself to make it. If it happens naturally, awesome, but I'll probably just stick to a 50-75 yearly reading goal. If you enjoy reading and want to set this goal for yourself, I definitely recommend at least once in your life!
Can I add this to my resume?
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