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How many books do you read each month, on average?
Um. Why isn't there a space for "per year" on this poll? 4 (18.2%)
0-1 Unlike some people, I have a life. But uh... don't tell anyway, okay? 3 (13.6%)
2-3 I do my best, but... you know. Plus I get sleepy. 5 (22.7%)
4-5 One a week? ...yeah, that's about right. 4 (18.2%)
6-10 I have an excuse, yo! I'm (1) a grad student (2) an addict (3) including graphic novels. Whaddya mean that's cheating? 4 (18.2%)
11+ It would be more, but RL gets in the way. But I feel really, really guilty about it. 2 (9.1%)
Total Votes: 22
How many books do you read/month?
Topic Started: Apr 8 2008, 11:24 PM (763 Views)
ekny
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In love with a prisoner
I was curious. (And no, technical manuals do not count! ;p )
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molsongrrrl
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G2 landing
i'm a reader ... so generally get through a book a week. but i also go in phases with it ... sometimes i don't read at all for a month or so and then boom ... right back to reading a lot.
There's nothing wrong with you that a little Prozac and a polo mallet can't cure.
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abzug
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In love with a prisoner
For four years, I walked to work, and thus I read about one book a month, and that was usually the book for my book club. Now I commute 45 minutes each way on the subway, and I have gone back to the voracious reading of my childhood. Nine days ago I got three books out of the library. I've already finished two of them, and am about 1/4 through the third. I absolutely love it. And I'm watching MUCH less television, which I thought I'd miss, but given the all-reality-all-the-time schedule the networks have going here in the US, I feel absolutely fine without tv.

I'm actually considering reading Middlemarch again; I think I've built up my reading muscles enough to be able to do it in a month, maybe 6 weeks.
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Mad Maggot
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Out of Dorm
I averagely read 4 books per month, I wouldn't say this is exactly one book per week, more like 2-2.5 without reading and then 4 books in the remaining 1.5-2 weeks. I starve myself and then I bulge.. in a way.

That being said, I haven't read a single book from cover to cover since February because I'm kind of not in the mood. But the four books that I ordered God knows when have finally been delivered, so it looks like I'm about to start reading again.

Plus, the number of books really does depend on whether you commute to school/work or not. I did a lot of commuting at the end of last year and that resulted in 8 books per month, now I don't even take a book with me since I walk or the ride lasts only 15-20 minutes (and this has nothing to do with the fact that I can't stuff a book into my purse).

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solitasolano
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The Muppets!
A little less than 10 yrs ago I went back to school. For three years plus I had to read and read and read....nothing but scientific papers, endless reams of them. No recreational reading for all that time. After I went back to my day job in a completely different field, I just couldn't stand to read anything, magazines included, almost an aversion to printed word.

I vowed to change my ways several years back. A short stack of books kept close at hand. I managed to complete one maybe every 6 months (I was reading, or trying to, non fiction mostly). I then joined a book club which got me up to one book a month. Change of work venue intervened and I had to give that up.....

Now thanks to the computerized and delivery system of the Los Angeles Public Library and the Amazing Lesbian Novel thread and, oh yes, working out of town with no tv in sight, I have devoured (for me) 14 books since just last December! That's alot for me, although I see for others here, that's routine. I don't read mysteries, I don't read science fiction. I work in a visual medium, I like my reading to be serious, intense, poetry to the prose, words put together in a way I never would.

Thanks to everyone on this board for your wonderful reading suggestions. Keep them coming.
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msalt
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Out of Dorm
Quote:
 
6-10 I have an excuse, yo! I'm (1) a grad student (2) an addict (3) including graphic novels. Whaddya mean that's cheating?


ha, you little snot! you wrote that one just for me, didn't you? you even made it sound like me. and just to spite you, i didn't choose that option.

actually, "for some odd reason" i've been writing down all the books i've read, starting in january this year. i've averaged 11 a month so far (and only one of them has been a graphic novel so far!). to be fair, a lot of them have been children's books, but that totally counts.
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ekny
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In love with a prisoner
Actually, it didn't enter my head. sorry! Believe it or not, (even) I speak to rather a lot of grad students, every day. <toothy grin>

It's been really interesting seeing the variety of responses & how people think about it, though, I'm enjoying this very much....
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dori
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Down the Block
:huh:

I have been reading books since I was 5, an average of 1 a week. I'm now 66 years old. That's a lot of books. Went of kindergarten (pre school) in Canada and the love of reading was instilled in me for life , This was before TV and computers. Cyberspace reading has become a new passion for me but the love of the printed word will never wain.

dmb
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ekny
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In love with a prisoner
I didn't answer this myself until now because I realized I'm really not sure: it varies according to what I'm reading. I have a fairly steady reading speed, I think (not sure what it is), but it changes radically depending. So if I read, say, ~80 pages an hour if it's lightweight (I'm guessing), then that's a book or a book & half a night, depending on how long I read for. But that's like... chewing gum or something: if I'm binging on mysteries or whatever, then I'm theoretically reading a lot of books/week, but do they Count? There's a whole internal debate going on about Quality. So we'll skip over that before I go off-topic & move briskly along: if I'm reading serious fiction, my speed starts to drop. Say ~60pph (pages per hour) for modern stuff, & as little as 40pph for really difficult or dense stuff. (This doesn't include something like the Canterbury Tales, which I gamely re-start again, every spring, & sort of feel like, speed really is not at issue. Or, I don't want it to be, anyway. Cause if it were I'd need remedial help.)

But this is complicated by the fact that I usually read more than 1 thing at a time, of necessity: because if I go to bed & read fiction... I'm perfectly capable of rationalizing "one more hour" until just before dawn & then I'm a rag the next day. The only way to keep myself from doing that is to read non-fiction in the hour before I want to go to sleep. It requires I not be enjoying myself too much with the fiction so that I can tear my grubby little hands OFF the book long enough to grab some non-fic instead: then I have a fighting chance at getting some sleep. Because no matter what it is, non-fiction requires a different kind of focus, at least for me it does. So my brain suddenly feels all hazy and lazy--surprise--and says Whoa! dude. This is not quite as much fun. Like, I'm learning, an' it's cool an' all, but... it requires concentration and--damnit, I'm sleepy. No, really? I murmur casually to myself. How 'bout that. ...but this paragraph was pretty interesting, too--you know you agree--so how about, say, just one more? 'kay? And thus we go back & forth in the background while the reading sneakily continues in the foreground until they hazily merge & I turn off the light.

So if I'm reading 1 chapter a night of Serious Non-fiction, I figure that's still 1-3, maybe 4 max, non-fiction books a month, which is not optimal but at least better than none. Or so I rationalize it to myself anyway. (The non-fiction also has some kind of magical thinking associated with it: an osmotic, almost... fictional!--power: I get Virtue Points just for trying, see?--which, when coupled with my game efforts to keep scraping away at the drifts of books around my ankles, will--somehow, by dint of sheer earnestness--keep my head from turning to putty.)


I tried to force myself to take part in the poll but frankly didn't have a CLEW as to what to check off, what with all this internal debating going on... pretty dopey huh? I guess I'd put 10 if someone shoved me into the voting booth. :)
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I love MJNet
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The bosses slave!
I love reading. As kids, my sister and I were brought up on books like The Hobbit *That was a firm favourite and I still remember pestering my father to read another chapter at night aged about 5 or 6 years old and he was literally already losing his voice having read to us already*

As soon as my sister and I could, we would pick the books being read to us and read them ourselves.

And even today, its probably the one thing I find some sort of time for, no matter what. So I can easily go through 3 or 4 books in a week.

Unfortunately my reading rate has dropped slightly because I now have arthritis, and I find holding a book can hurt too much! So far, I've not found anything as a book holder to help out practically enough. This is a particular problem because I am a reader who hates pushing pages back too much and putting any kind of creasing down a books spine! And most book readers are only set up to spread out the pages, thus creasing the spines!

So yeah, I love reading.


“In ancient times cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this.”
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Juls037
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Down the Block
I chose 6 - 10/month, but that's because I haven't been reading much lately. Or, I suppose, finishing much. I think I have somewhere in the neighborhood of 7 books started right now. Alot of what I've been reading recently has either been fairly dense or work related. I've not done much "fun" reading. Happily, it's starting to get warmer out and stay lighter longer, so my days of sitting outside reading should pick up.
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richard
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Enhanced
This thread is a great one and I must confess that my reading has gone down the pan. I used to read a lot and have bookcases round the house as I would not dream of parting with books that I've read over the years. That is so wrong and a house/ flat without books is uncivilised. I do occasionally go to the local library for fresh books. I find these days that the alternative of watching TV has been cut right back as there are very few programmes that I care to watch these days. My excuse is writing fanfic which hopefully makes up. That guilt complex is there, though.
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