The 2012 Annual Reading Challenge - Discussion Thread!

[Dazrin]

Originally Posted by jbcohen

How many of us are reading short books so as to be able to ensure that you meet your target?
...
So how many of us prefer to read longer books than the shorter ones? For sake of measurement lets say that a long book is over 350 pages.

That is why I used a page goal instead of a book goal. The books I tend to read are generally longer (for example, Robert Jordan and Tom Clancy), so I didn't want to change my habits (and what I like!) to meet some arbitrary goal.

That said, I have been reading a lot more short stories (my average page/book is only 335 right now), but I attribute that to my Kindle purchase and the gobs of free short stories available. Before I got my Kindle, I rarely read any books less than 250-300 pages.

[sun surfer]

Originally Posted by jbcohen

How many of us are reading short books so as to be able to ensure that you meet your target?

That's why I changed my goal from books to pages this year. I read plenty of shorter books, but I tend to read a good amount of really long books, and I've enjoyed it so much more this year not thinking at all about length of a book for the challenge.

Originally Posted by HomeInMyShoes

When I generate my list of required books I do take length into account and give myself about 40 pages a day to read. I just can't read 50 500 pages books in a year. Some books are shorter, some are longer. Average length right now is 298.8 pages. I've read 11 books over 350 pages this year, but then I'm averaging over 60 pages a day right now.

I give myself a goal of 42 pages a day to read with one day off a week, but my actual pages read per day really depends on the book. A hard book, it can dip down to 20 pages a day or less, while with a really easy book, I've had some 100+ and even approaching 150 page days.

It's such a drastic difference that I'm even considering incorporating that into my challenge next year, the way I switched from books read to pages read this year. I'm at the very early stages of thinking about it, but I'm considering things such as each page in an easy book counting as 1 page, each page in a medium book counting as 2, each page in a hard book counting as 3...something like that, maybe.

[HomeInMyShoes]

@jbcohen: but you are averaging 70 pages a day so far.

I averaged 43.69 pages a day last year which is a lot for me. I've already generated my list of books for next year with an average per day of 36.08.

[HomeInMyShoes]

Originally Posted by sun surfer

That's why I changed my goal from books to pages this year.
...
I give myself a goal of 42 pages a day to read with one day off a week, but my actual pages read per day really depends on the book. A hard book, it can dip down to 20 pages a day or less, while with a really easy book, I've had some 100+ and even approaching 150 page days.
...

I know. It took me forever to read In the Days of the Comet, but Pyramids was gone instantly. Some periods I'm just more motivated to read. I like the day off concept. I like going for a list of books with an interesting theme or reason for picking them. This year it was only 26 books to complete two challenges. Next year I've only got one challenge, but it's 44 books and 13,200 pages long. I might fail that one, but I like the concept I came up with and finding books is often the most fun part.

[DrNefario]

In theory, the rules of my challenge allow me to count a book as 2 if it is over 500 pages long, but I haven't been doing that*. I think I have probably been dodging thicker books to some extent, and I've almost certainly been reading more shorter books to earn time for a longer book.

I've just read a book for a book club which was barely more than 150 pages, with fairly large print. Next month's is almost 600 pages, and I'm thinking of giving it a miss.

On the other hand, I have just finished reading the 6 novellas, 5 novelettes and 5 short stories for the Hugo ballot, and I'm not counting those at all.

*I did get to count A Dance with Dragons as two because the UK paperback version I read was printed as two volumes. (One of which was itself over 500 pages long, excluding the appendices, the other ended on page 499.)

[CRussel]

I'm not really counting pages or length, just trying to read what I want and making sure I keep track of it all. I just finished a short book, but that was more about wanting to read something on my classics list rather than for length. I didn't set a hard and fast total number of books for the year, but it looks like I'll have no problems getting to ~125. That seems a good enough number, one every three days or so.

[sun surfer]

Originally Posted by HomeInMyShoes

...I like the day off concept...

I originally meant it to be a day of rest, but I find I often read that day anyway. What's great though is that since that day my goal is zero pages, there's no sense of needing to get to a certain amount of pages at least once a week, and it's a great "catch up" or "extend my lead" day.

[dreams]

I just read or listen to what I want. My problem is keeping track of it. I am soooo bad at recording what I have finished. I am usually more interested in what is up next.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by dreams

I just read or listen to what I want. My problem is keeping track of it. I am soooo bad at recording what I have finished. I am usually more interested in what is up next.

I do my best to record immediately after finishing a book, but occasionally I forget and have to add several at once.

My news is that my TBR is now under 320 for the first time in ages!

If I can just manage not to buy too many more books in the second half of the year, I should make my 2012 goal of getting under 300 by the end of the year.

[jbcohen]

320, wow that a big to be read stack. I would guess mine is somewhere around twenty I generally do not like to keep a to be read stack except this time around I participated in two monthly bean bundles and as a conseqence I have the last book in a six book series, so I need to go back and read books one through five in order to understand what is going on in book six. Right now I am going through book three in a series of six called the Worlds at War series.

I have also heard some good things about the Bookeen Opus and since you have that and the kindle you, pdurrant are in a good position to contrast the two of them. I have heard that the opus specializes in reading of non-english books. I mean the kindle and nooks can do that its just that the opus was designed around foreign languege books.

When you choose between the Opus and the kindle to read on why do you select the opus?

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by jbcohen

When you choose between the Opus and the kindle to read on why do you select the opus?

I usually read on the Opus for two reasons

(1) I prefer the smaller form factor(5" screen vs 6" screen with keyboard)
(2) My Kindle is on semi-permanent loan to my sisters-in-law.

I bought the opus because they were on sale for £50 plus £5 for a case. It was a good buy. I currently have it on the Mobipocket firmware, but I suspect that sometime in the next year I'll be switching it over to the ePub firmware, and converting my library over to ePub from Mobipocket. (Thanks, Alf!)

[sakura-panda]

Originally Posted by jbcohen

How many of us are reading short books so as to be able to ensure that you meet your target?

Not me -- I have a "goal" because I like having something for my marker to approach on the ticker. I'm kind of shallow that way.

Originally Posted by jbcohen

So how many of us preferr to read longer books than the shorter ones? For sake of measurement lets say that a long book is over 350 pages.

I do prefer longer books, but I also enjoy some shorter books. I tend to try to avoid books that have less than 200 pages, although I have read some really good ones that were that were only about 170 pages or so.

[Kevin8or]

I see a lot of inspiring posts in this thread, and communal support for reading goals. It's very nice. I've added a sad update to my reading challenge:

Edit: 2012 Challenge Canceled. Shortly after writing these goals, holidays with family and friends interuppted my reading and internet routines. My participation at MR had crossed the line from healthy to addictive, and I used the holiday hiatus to make a cold-turkey break. I stayed completely away from MR for several months. I was reading as voraciously as ever but didn't follow my rules concerning content (non-fiction, western canon).

I've been again visiting MR on a daily basis, for about a month now, while trying not to get sucked into spending excessive time here. The MR community is really, really appealing. Dangerously so.

[CRussel]

Well, you have been missed, Kevin8or. But I fully understand. And as for goals -- Just stick with enjoying your reading, whatever it is. That IS the point.

[jbcohen]

Addicted hmm, that's an unusal word to be applied to a book group. Kevin is the first person that I have heard of to apply that word to a book group, I guess this book group could be consdered addictive in some way. I guess if one felt compelled to visit the site time and time again participation could be addictive in a way. Personally I do not feel compelled to come here rather I come to gather information that I need for my day to day reading and sometimes to verify information that I find elsewhere, as I have done in a recent question for forum members on this section of the forums. Freqeuntly I have gained an understanding of matters related to electronic litterature that would have been unavailable without the book group.