I don’t know how many books I’ve read. I blame comics.

Anna Schumacher’s YA Book Giveaway Writers Who Read: Eddy Webb

I don’t know how many books I’ve read. I blame comics.

I’ve been keeping track of all the books I’ve read for the past five years on a Google spreadsheet. It’s allowed me to record what I’ve read, when, and what I thought about it, not to mention other categories that aren’t tracked on reading sites like Goodreads: whether a story is self-published for instance, or if I read it for book club. Beyond those practical uses, I’ve always been drawn to analyzing my habits, reading and otherwise. I love a good pie chart as much as pie itself.

I started the spreadsheet in 2010, which seems about right: 2009 would’ve been too early, 2011 twelve months too late. My spreadsheet has columns and rows, a box for mini-reviews, and a way to color-code those books I’m currently reading. It’s organized. I can see how many books I’ve read in a given year, and how many of those were fantasy novels, self-published, or penned by women.

I’d set a goal to completely read 50 books this year, and I was trucking along.

But.

But in the past year my spreadsheet has failed me. Or I’ve failed it. Or reading and stories have been changing and these sorts of things are no longer accurate or useful.

Especially since I started reading a lot of romance, I noticed I was reading shorter books and novellas. And that was fine. Novellas are nearly book-sized. But then I started reading comics. I read the first three volumes of Saga in an entire weekend, which I tracked as all one book in my spreadsheet. But then came the single issue of Howard the Duck I thumbed through. Since it took half an hour to read, should I count it on the chart? I started beta-reading more short stories too, and I’d often group them together in threes on my chart, because together maybe they were at least novella-sized. But then others were one-offs I charted alone. They counted as separate entries on my Goodreads book challenge, which helped me at least move towards my goal.

Now, in summer 2015, I’ve either read 55 books or 28 or maybe 25.44, depending on how you count. Does it matter? Not really. But I like to chart my books, and I like to set challenges–to assure I’m reading, for pleasure and my own writing growth.

Maybe I should set a new goal: 50 different authors a year. That seems doable, and definitely more chartable.