I didn’t have a specific reading goal for 2018. That is, I didn’t say to myself, I am going to read 50 books this year. Way back when I started keeping my list of books in 1996, I did have a goal: Read one book per week. It seemed reasonable at the time, and yet I never managed to make that goal until 2013, when I read 54 books.
Setting a goal
Having a book count as a goal is tricky. Books vary in length. This year, for instance, the average length of books I read was 473 pages. But there is wide variation. The shortest book I read this year was The Testament of Mary by Colm Tóibín, which came in at 96 pages. The longest book I read this year was The Power Broker by Robert A. Caro, which exceed 1,300 pages. I read 16 books this year that I consider to be “long” book, each exceeding 700 pages. Such variation makes it difficult to set a specific number of books as a goal.
As most of the my reading comes through audiobook, I rely more on how much time I can spend listening to books each day. Audiobooks makes it easy to listen to books while doing other things: working out, commuting, doing chores around the house, waiting in line, watching your kid’s soccer or basketball practice. Audiobook turn out to be one of my best productivity tricks. Early in the year I set a target of 3-1/2 hours of listening time per day.
From that start, I looked at what the average length of a book I’ve read since I started listening to audiobooks in 2013. It turns out to be 453 pages, which translates into an average of 17 hours, 45 minutes of listening time per book. Well, knowing that, and with a target of 3-1/2 hours of listening time per day, I knew it would take me about 5 days on average to finish a book. And knowing that, I could make a reasonable estimate of how many books I could listen to in a year. That came out to about 73 books, far more than any previous year.
Adjusting the goal
At first, that number seemed completed unreasonable. In 22 previous years the best I’d ever done was last year when I finished 58 books. 73 books would be a 25% increase over last year.
Two things combined to change my outlook:
First, I found that I was regularly exceeding my daily goal of 3-1/2 hours of listening time. For instance, last month, I averaged 4-1/4 hours of listening per day. I keep a little heat map of this data, and here’s what it looks like for November:
Second, over the last 5 years that I’ve listened to audiobooks, I’ve steadily increased the speed at which I listen. I started at 1x and after a long time, moved to 1.25x. Early this year, I moved to 1.5x. Then, this fall, when a new Audible app update introduced the 1.75x speed, I started listening at that speed. Each jump takes some getting used to initially. For the most part, these days, I listen to nonfiction at 1.75x and fiction at 1.5x. When I try to listen to a book at 1x these days, the narrator sounds as if they are on quaaludes.
This had a significant impact on how much I managed to read this year. At 1x speed and an average of 4 hours 15 minutes per day, I can get through 7 book in a month. By comparison, at 1.75x speed, I can get through almost 13 book in the same month. Over the course of an entire year, that’s 150 books! But as I didn’t make this change until more than halfway through the year, I adjusted my goal to something I still thought of as a stretch: 120 book for 2018.
The Goodreads Reading 2018 Reading Challenge
Goodreads has an annual reading challenge where you can set a goal and track your progress, along with that of your friends. So I went into Goodreads and set of goal of 120 books. It looked to be a lot more books than what I was seeing for many people. Indeed, it turns out that the average goal for the Goodreads challenge this year is 59 books. My goal of 120 books is double that. I figured I’d come close, but fall a few books short.
Then, over the weekend, this happened:
I finished my 120th book in early December. It’s hard to believe, even with the evidence right there in front of me. And given that I’ve been averaging 14-15 books/month for the last few months, and that the second half of December I’ll be on vacation, I think it is safe to assume that I’ll finish 2018 in the neighborhood of 135 books.
Goals for 2019
So what is my goal for 2019? I’m tempted to set a goal of 148 books for 2019. That may seem like an odd number to pick, but there is some logic to it. Assuming I finish 14 more books this year, 148 books next year means that my last book of 2019 will be my 1,000th book since I started keeping my list in 1996.
That is a stretch goal if ever there was one, but I think stretch goals are good, and it gives me something with extra meaning to aim for.
Anyone else have reading goals for 2019? Let me know in the comments.
And for those wondering about the best books I’ve read in 2018, I’ll have a post on that–in January. I don’t think it is fair to put out a “best of” list for 2018 before the year is over. Back in 2016 the best book I read that year was Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen. I didn’t read that book until the end of December. So look for my “best of” list in January.
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I’ve been doing 52 books a year for the past five years. I generally exceed it by a few with 80 being my high point thus far. The wrench forms is that I want to write a bit of a review with the books that I read which slows down the process.
If I was to add audio fiction I could easily hit 100 but I’d cut back on my podcast listening which I also value.
Avid reader here – at least one book per week; the last four-five years – almost twice. The last two years – well over 100. Almost 150 last year, and I think I’ll be able to reach (even pass) that amount this year. I include audiobooks.