Speed “Reading”

I started listening to audiobooks five years ago. I wanted to read more. With an audiobook, I could read while doing other things: exercising, walking, driving, doing chores around the house. Since then, I’ve listened to nearly 200 audiobooks. The switch to audiobooks has allowed me add an additional 4,200 pages per year over my reading without audiobooks.

But I am still not entirely satisfied with how much I am reading. Every now and then, I see a statistic that puts me in my place. I recently saw some stat that claims Stephen King has read well over 10,000 books. King is older than me, of course, but even at my recent pace, I’d never make it to 10,000 books in my lifetime. About 18 months ago, I began listening to audiobooks at 1.25x speed. This allowed me to finish a book faster and squeeze more reading into the same amount of time. It required a minor mental adjustment, but I’ve since grown so used to it that 1x speed seems artificially slow.

Not long ago, I did some math. After seeing that Stephen King stat, I wondered what I could do to squeeze in more reading. What was in the realm of the possible, given the reality of my busy life? According to my data, the average time length of an audiobook that I read is about 19 hours. This translates roughly into 450 printed pages. What if I tried to commit to getting in 3-1/2 hours of reading every day?

The math told me that at that at a speed of 1.25x, a 19 hour audiobook can be listened to in about 15 hours. At a rate of 3.5 hours per day, I can finish a book, on average, once every 4 days, or so. Beginning in November, I put this plan into effect, with a good deal of success, as the chart from my Audible app below illustrates.

At that pace, in a full year, I should be able to get through about 90 average length books. I tend toward longer books, but all things being equal, I rounded that number to 80 books per year. That’s 800 books in a decade. Given that I’ve already got 720 under my belt since I started counting in 1996, and if I can hope for four more good decades, I can expect to read about 4,000 books. Still, nowhere near Stephen King’s number.

This weekend, I started reading Ron Chernow’s biography of Ulysses S. Grant, a massive 1,100 page volume, which, in terms of audio time is nearly 50 hours. I decided once again, to up the pace, and began listening to the book at 1.5x speed. I thought this would be too fast, but after a year and half at 1.25x speed, 1.5x did not seem so bad. About 20 hours into the book, and I’m completely used to it by now. Doing this required me to reevaluate my math to see how it impacts my reading in the long run.

At 1.5x, I can finish a 19 hour book in about 12-1/2 hours. At a pace of 3.5 hours per day, that’s a book every 3.5 days. This translates to about 100 books per year, 1,000 books per decade, and perhaps nearly 5,000 books in my lifetime.

At this point in my life, 3.5 hours of listening/day is my theoretical limit. There are days when I manage 4, 5, even 6 hours, but there are an equal number of days where I manage only 2 or 2-1/2 hours. I’m also skeptical that listening at a speed beyond 1.5x would gain me anything. I think at those speeds, my enjoyment, and understanding would suffer.

I’m content with these number, for now. It is the best I can do. But I do marvel at people who can read 10,000, or 15,000 books in a lifetime.