How many books do you read per month?

[[deleted user]]

Ala wrote: "Usually 4-8, depending on my mood"

woah, this thread is old. O_o

I now read 4-8 a week.

[Nicole]

For me it depends on how busy I am sometimes I can several books in one week but it can depend.

[Kevin]

Between 0 and 6 or so. I also play a lot of video games (big time consuming cRPGs mostly), so in a game heavy week I barely read. And vice versa.

[AndrewP]

Usually 3-4 but it obviously depends on their length. Currently I am reading a 400 page book and 2 doorstops, so my pace has been a bit slow. Next month, I am probably going to count the Wool Omnibus as 5 books (if I get that far), so my count will pick up.

[A.L.]

It depends really on length of the book, my mood and how much time I have. I tend to read one before bed and another on my kindle on the bus. I do go through mad reading sprees though:)

[Melissa]

I read 5-6 books a month. I would love to read to more, but as an English teacher, I spend a great deal of time reading student papers. I love audio books because I can listen while I run or do housework.

[Bryan]

I vary quite a bit. It depends on the size of the book(I have a fondness for massive tomes that make other people go pale), but also on how busy I am. I always try to read every day, but at times when I'm really busy I might just read one page before bed. Right now I'm averaging about 3 books a month, whereas last year I averaged about 2.

[Paul]

I'm averaging about 5 so far this year but that's high. Normally it's 1-3.

I'm always curious when I hear about people reading lots of books whether it's that they read much faster than me or whether they've just got lost more free time. Just to throw out a few numbers my average reading speed is about 225 words/min which is slightly on the slow side of average (250 according to Wikipedia). So for example I read Old Man's War (94,000 words) in about 6 1/2 hours. It took me 16 hours to read Downbelow Station (165,000) and Dragonflight (89000) was about 8 1/2.

In terms of free time I've spent an average of 1:20 per day this year, which is actually an average of 2 hours per day for days I actually read at all.

(If you're wondering how I know this I actually track my reading on a spreadsheet - sad I know!)

I could read more but I'd have to give up time spent doing other things. I don't watch much TV but I do follow a couple of shows. I occasionally go out with friends for a meal. I read the internet following Goodreads forums and so on.

[Scott]

Depends, without audiobooks, 1-2, with audiobooks about 8 per month

[AndrewP]

FYI - since I loaded the Kindle App on my phone I read about a book a month more. It's amazing how all those little 5 minute snippets total up over the month.

[Fresno Bob]

I set a goal of 100 books in 2013, physical books, I don't do audio books (because they read too slow!) although I listen to ton of podcasts in my car.

Basically I read on planes and most evenings before bed

[Bernardo]

I usually read 1 to 2 books a month. I wish I could read faster, but I often re-read things as I go along

[John]

I'm lucky if I get through two a month. I have, like, a hundred other things I try to do with my spare time (including writing books), and I just can't make the time. With some longer books, it's taken me a month to read one!

[Seawood]

Jenny wrote: "I read about 15 books a month right now."

Oh good, I'm not the only outlier! I averaged 15/mo last year, 180 in total - it would have been more but I got side-tracked by Coursera in Autumn. I'm slightly ahead on my target for this year at the moment (150) but it'll dip off and on for various reasons, not least that I plan to pick up more Extremely Thick Tomes of Fantasy this year. :) Plus my little girl's stopped napping now and that's a good hour or so a day I don't get any more.

I do read very quickly and I use Kindle text-to-speech a lot when doing chores or driving. Having the app on my phone is a bonus too, since I often have 5-10mins waiting for school pick-ups etc. It really mounts up.

[Noah]

I've been averaging about a book a day, but I'm finally starting to slow down, since I hit my reading goal and I am trying new challenges instead. I think about 15 books a month is more realistic.

[Steve]

Last year I was only reading 1 or 2 books a month. Then I got a Kindle for Christmas and I'm now reading 4-6 books a month (though only about half of those are on Kindle) Part of my increased reading intake is due to all the extra bits of reading time when I pull my Kindle out for 5 minutes when in a queue or something. The rest of it is because I'm reading more of what I actually want to read, rather what I *think* I want to read, or feel I should read. Also I'm making more time for reading - averaging at least an hour a day now, sometimes nearer two. It is so easy to do other things than read, like playing games, surfing the web and spending time on Goodreads (erm, like now...), I often have to specifically make time to read.

Oh and someone mentioned not listening to audiobooks because they are read too slow by the narrators. The audible app (for Android anyway), has a speed adjuster, so you can listen at 1.25 speed, 1.5, 2, even 3x speed. Depending on the narrator, I've found upto 1.5 comfortable, though occasionally when wanting to finish a book before I get to work I have cranked it up to the maximum x3 speed. Not recommended though - at that speed it is headache inducing if longer than a few minutes - my brain at least was not built to process audio input that fast!

[Chad]

Not nearly as many as I buy - sigh.

[Michelle]

I read 13 books last year (so about 1 a month on avg.) and hoping to double it this year. I read mainly non-fiction and the books average around 400 or so pages but try and wedge in some sci-fi or fantasy here or there. I'm on track so far so I'm please with my progress.

[Clyde]

Chad wrote: "Not nearly as many as I buy - sigh."

I know your pain, Chad!

For me it varies, but over a year I seem to average slightly more than a book a week. I always have at least three books going at once -- one paper, one audio, and one or more digital. The digital format seems to progress faster.

[Tim]

I'm averaging two books a week across all formats (kindle, DTB and audio). But the page count can be quite variable (1100 for Great North Road, down to maybe 50 for a short). So Pages per week might be a better indication...

Given that we're in week 17 currently, according to Goodreads stats, the 35 books I've read so far this year add up to 10708 pages, which is 630 pages per week.

[Christopher]

I usually can consume about 100-150 pages a day 4-5 days a week. So depending on length I can usually get 4 books in a month. I also have a 45 minute drive one way to work so I consume an hour and a half of audio book a day. I usually go for longer books in audio format, to keep to the 1 credit a month.

[Rob, Roberator]

I wish the book metadata had word counts, because while pages are a better mechanism than books to measure your reading, it's still not very good.

The number of pages for a book can vastly differ with form factor. As someone who favors MMPB for ease of holding/transporting, my page counts are probably higher than folks who read more HC or trades.

Plus, many ebooks don't have a page count, since a 'page' is totally arbitrary based on settings. So as people are reading more and more ebooks, it's not always easy to compare.

[Sandi]

Chad wrote: "Not nearly as many as I buy - sigh."

Me too.

[Mark]

I'm reading more since I joined S&L, but I've also cut back on TV as well which may account for the increase in reading. Last year I set a goal of 50 books and missed by a couple. It's kind of motivational to keep an eye on the counter there on my Goodreads home page. I set the same goal for this year, but my numbers are completely skewed by Scalzi's The Human Division episodes and several short stories that all count as books to the Goodreads counter. I think I'll be able to read about 50 novels this year. Just have to pick the right ones.

[Scott]

Chad wrote: "Not nearly as many as I buy - sigh."

Hear, hear

[Geir]

So far this year, I finished 36, including a couple that I started on last year. That makes for more or less 9 per month. I've been keeping that pace since I bought a Nexus 7 last year, but before that it had crawled to a standstill, maybe 1 every 2 months.

I have an annoyingly long commute to work most days, but atleast it's good for reading.

Number of pages would obviously depend on your font size, screen size, book size or zoom level. Not a good measure. I'm using Moon+ Reader and it says I'm doing between 200 and 250 words per minute. I don't have much data yet since that function was just added, but for 2 science fiction books (Larry Niven) it was 200 and 201 wpm, while a couple fantasy books (R.A. Salvatore) were 252 and 263 wpm. Interesting. Maybe Niven uses longer words, or maybe I just read faster when it's about dark elves. Need more data!

[LegalKimchi]

I have averaged 1 book a week. audio only. that is simply because I work all day and attend class all night and I listen to audiobooks when I can at 3x speed.

[AndrewP]

Scott wrote: "Chad wrote: "Not nearly as many as I buy - sigh."

Hear, hear"

There's a GR group for that - "Book Buying Addicts Anonymous", but don't expect much "help".. lol

http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/2...

[Steve H]

I go through phases..when I have my reading mojo in place I can do a couple of books per week.

[Chris]

I am doing 3-4 per month this year. I can't believe the people who are reading over 10 per month! How can you do one per day? Are they really short books or are they really fast readers?

[Paul]

Where's Felicia in this thread? Doesn't she read about 3 books per day?

A fiction book usually takes me about a week. Non-fiction can take longer, depending on the topic.

Last year I read about 18 books. This year I'm already up to 10.

I tend to read in cycles though. I read almost nothing in February, for example.

[Lea]

I'm a full time college student [Literature and Writing major] about halfway through my senior year which might skew my numbers a bit since I read a lot of books for school but I'd say I average somewhere between ten and fifteen books a month. I almost always have at least one book on me whether I'm at home, school or running errands which helps and I'm usually juggling multiple books at the same time too [had to learn to do this if I wanted to get any "pleasure" reading done during the semester!].