What about you? How much do you read?
Lately, a lot of consumption has been in video, because, for some reason people like to teach with videos instead of text. Also I realized that my eyes were 'glitching' -- when wearing glasses past a certain power level, words start to flicker on screens, especially short distance ones. So I got reading glasses and things are better now.
Be warned that you can read a lot faster if you skip comprehension; reading a mentally challenging book means that the bottleneck is how fast your brain can process the information. AI has been good at "predigesting" info i.e. doing summaries before the actual reading.
Some books are extremely difficult to get through without the context. Just an hour ago, I was reading Joyce Carol Oates' Heat (a poem-story), which seemed difficult because it was unfamiliar. Then it clicked when I saw that every paragraph only contained one point of information and the narration was distorted on purpose to evoke unclear memories, but it was still chronological. After that, reading was a breeze.
Other things are hard to read because of some fear of getting better after you read it; some form of regret at not doing this earlier. I still haven't completed reading The Pragmatic Programmer, despite starting it almost 10 years ago.
Anyway, to answer the question, probably 4 books/year in the last 2 years. I've been forcing myself to try to focus on a book until it's finished and it's proven very inefficient.
June 2020 - May 2021 30 books
June 2021 - May 2022 36 books
June 2022 - May 2023 31 books
June 2023 - now 12 books
The books range from a 1000 pages geology textbook to a 6-hour light sci-fi audiobook. I only count books I have read in full though, so the count does not include massive time I have spent going through various other textbooks.
BTW VCs and VC-funded people like to boast of crazy book counts like 100-150 / year. I think that's easy to achieve if you read the kind of books that VCs read.
> it's too slow to consume all the books I have in front of me.
I like to have a growing bookshelf of unread books. These are the most interesting (see Nassim Taleb' description of Umberto Eco's library).
But to address your real concern: I think we just need to make peace with only sampling a tiny fraction of what the world has to offer (literarily and otherwise). You can't visit every town, try every food, learn every skill, or even keep up with the rate of publications within the small niche that you are most interested in.
So, rather than completing a list of all the things you "should read", I think the goal should be to try to continuously marinate your mind in the interesting ideas from books you enjoy. That is really the best we can do, but I think it could also lead to a life well lived if you find contentment in the journey rather than the destination
With regards to having too many books to read then consider two facts. One is that there is no price or gain from having read a book if only for the fact of having to say so. Reading is not the same as understanding or learning. Second, interests change what you want to read today is not the same as you want to read in a month or year. So perhaps your list of books you want to read today is 100 books or more, but perhaps that list is reduced to 20 books by just waiting a year or two - who knows.
Don't stress about it - there is nothing to gain from that.
Obviously my reading speed is pretty fast but I also try to commit to reading at least 45 minutes a day on the weekdays and usually a couple hours a day on the weekends. Even if I feel bad I’ll read a few pages just to keep the streak alive. I’ve been reading quickly since I was a kid and remember my mom going through 3 or 4 paperback thrillers each weekend.
I read entirely on my Kindle and buy a ton of ebooks. Wouldn’t surprise me if I’ve spent $1,500 or $2,000 this year on books. But it’s a cost that’s worth it to me because I always have something to read or something to look forward to reading.
A few days a week, I like to stop at a coffeeshop on the way home from work to read and relax. That’s a little treat for myself. Get a cookie and a cold brew and get my reading in for the day.
Unfortunately I buy more books than I can read, and this gives me anxiety. I think it will probably take me at least 3 years to finish everything I have now. Anyway, youtube watching is down and I don't spend as much time doomscrolling reddit, so that's good.
By the way, I read hundreds of books per year, but that's because I have small kids and read to them every night. I'm extremely grateful to the fact that there's an amazing public library in my city.
The first few months were truly challenging, we found we struggled to read more than a few pages at a time. But it got easier.
That's kinda been replaced outright by reading similar stuff on the internet, albeit more skewed towards the tech side due to my job and current hobbies.
So stuff read online? Probably hundreds of thousands or millions of words worth a month. Stuff read in physical formats like books and magazines? Virtually nothing, since I just can't get invested in the format anymore.
However reading to my children (currently Fellowship of the Ring) has been a real pleasure, so I do still enjoy it in the right circumstances!
I keep a little index of the books I read every year, along with a rating, how many pages the book was and the completed date.
I wish I started writing down what I read a long time ago, I've twice recently started reading books only to realise that I had read them in years prior.