I have been doing it for the last decade or so, setting a goal for how many books I am going to read over the next calendar year. I always set the goal, but I don't always make it. One of my daughters sets a reading goal every year, and she makes it every year. Why? I can't say it's because I'm busy and she's not, because she is one of the busiest people I know.
When I was working full-time for a living (as opposed to now, when I don't really do anything full-time. Writing is probably the closest I get to full-time work, and I only do that a few hours every day), I didn't stand a chance of making my goal. I wouldn't have any time except at the end of the day and more often than not there I am in bed with the book on my chest or my face and I'm sound asleep, and you can't absorb those words through your skin, can you?
The last few years I worked, I was on the road a lot and spent hours every week on planes. Perfect, right? A few hours on a plane with your headphones on to keep talkative people next to you at bay, and you can progress through the most difficult prose. Right? Not for me, unfortunately.
I did not find that to be true, because normally when I got on a plane I was either going to visit a client or coming back from one, and I was usually stressed out either way. So I would end up plugging my headphones into the video monitor and watching a movie. That's close, right? It's a story - challenging plots, action, the human condition - why, when you think about it that way, what's the REAL difference between Avengers: Endgame and Pride and Prejudice?
I am very good at rationalization, as you can see.
So while I can set a goal of fifty books a year, there is less than a snowball's chance in hell of me even getting close to that goal. But I would set the goal with all the optimism of a new year's resolution, and then find myself at the end of the year struggling to make it halfway. So I started setting a goal of twenty-five books a year. Now that's achievable, but not much of a challenge. You have to stretch yourself a little, right?
Another convenient rationalization I use is that I read a lot of looooonng books. For example: James S.A. Corey's Expanse series is chock-full of six-hundred page volumes, and I can't swallow one of those in a weekend. Or the books in Cixin Liu's Three-body Problem series. Those are long and complicated. So there's that. If I could just find a few two hundred page space operas!
Actually, who wants that? A good space opera should be long!
When I retired from full-time work I got more aggressive. The last couple years I have gone for forty books a year. Last year I made it but this year I won't, unless I open my next book and it's in something like twenty-point type.
Here's the problem: I have been trading reading for writing, and I suppose in a way that's a good thing, because it took a long time to get the writing habit into my brain, and now it's there and I can't stop. I need to write every day. But you have to feed the brain, correct? Train your mind with good writing so that what you produce comes out better than it would otherwise. If you have the bug, reading is a form of nourishment, and that bug won't let you live without it.
So I'll keep giving myself a reading challenge. I hope everyone does.
