Some interesting reading data

[Joseph]

I found this article https://qz.com/895101/in-the-time-you... to include some very interesting information.

"How much time does it take to read 200 books a year?
First, let’s look at two quick statistics:
The average American reads 200–400 words per minute (Since you’re on Medium, I’m going to assume you read 400 wpm like me)
Typical non-fiction books have ~50,000 words
Now, all we need are some quick calculations…
200 books * 50,000 words/book = 10 million words
10 million words/400 wpm = 25,000 minutes
25,000 minutes/60 = 417 hours
That’s all there is to it. To read 200 books, simply spend 417 hours a year reading."

Using the formula above to look back at last year, it was interesting to learn that having read 403 books would mean I spent about 700 hours reading last year. How about you? Just replace the 200 books in the formula with the number you did read and see how many hours you spent reading.

[Lin]

That was interesting. Thanks, Joseph, fir posting.

[Lin]

I took your formula one step further. 417 hours, that sounds like a lot of reading time. Especially to someone who probably doesn't read a lot. I took 417 hours and divided that by 365(days in a year). The answer was 1 hour and 15 minutes. That totally surprised me. Bet it would a lot if other people too. That is a small amount of time out of each day. Especially since I know I read at least 3 hours or more, a day.

[Heidi]

Wow, I must read really slowly. I usually read about an hour each night, but last year I only read 28 books. I did take some time off, but not enough to account for such a huge deficit. Of course, several of the books I read were fantasy tomes well over 50K words, but still.

At the end of the day, reading should be for enjoyment, and stats like this just take the joy away for me.

[Lin]

I don't think the total number of books is what is important. Reading should be for pleasure. I think the stats posted were more for entertainment value than anything else. If someone likes to read and wants to increase the amount they read, it would be easy to simply be aware of the time you set aside for reading. For example, make a goal of reading 45 minutes a day. This would result in well over 200 hours per year.

[Betsy]

I agree with you, Lin, that reading should be for pleasure not numbers. I average 6 hours a day reading time since I am retired so I have been able to read many wonderful books, hardcover and on my Kindle.

[Patricia]

I'm late to the conversation, but I want to go back to the initial calculations, which assume an average of 50,000 words per book. That is for non-fiction but seems awfully low for fiction. I write mystery novels - three published so far. The average word count is over 80,000, and these are not particularly long books. As Heidi noted, fantasy tomes are much longer - I'd guess about 120,000 words. That said, I read for pleasure and wish that joy for others.