Wednesday, January 15, 2014

To Read or Not to Read

To read lists are something  I have kept for decades, what at one time was a small notebook I carried with me, that later became a spreadsheet, and now an extensive list online.  
There are many options out there to track your books and reading adventures,  goodreadsLibraryThing, MyBookTrackerShelfari,  are just a few. For more information read Tracking the Books in Your Library  by GeekDad to read reviews and overviews of  the different options available.

I still carry my notebook, now though this is more a list of  books I want  to add to my book shelves, or books out of print where I am missing some in a series.  Though I have been using GoodReads since 2009 to track, review and locate books I want to read.

In looking at my goodreads to Read list I have 2490 books that I want to read. 
I average reading around 200 + books a year so if I never add another book it will take me 12 years to finish reading what I already want to read... Which is not bad and an achievable goal.
But then I started to dig deeper ...  
Between finding new authors or books I want to read, and new books published each year, or wanting to re-read books that I read decades ago, or those I re-read before a new book is released in a series.
 I have averaged adding 600 new books to read to this list  each year. (and I usually only add the first book in any series I have not read yet) This number is trending down as I go so I am going to base it on 400 new finds to add each year . With reading 200 a year, that means each year I add 1 year to the time it will take to read them all...    

I now know that I have the following options:

1. Double or triple the number of books I read each year. (who needs to work or sleep? when you can read?)
2. Stop expanding the number of topics, genre's new authors I want to read. (Really this is too depressing to even consider)
3. Give up its hopeless, and just realize that this bucket list will never be completed before I die.












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