I track my reading on Goodreads and each year they provide a summary:
That works out to more than a book per week and around 72.5 pages per day, which seems high but it is rare for me to not read at least for a short time several times a day. Also a lot of books I read have extensive appendices of places and names as is common in sci-fi/fantasy literature or lots of end-notes in non-fiction books and that adds to the page count so I figure on average I read 40-50 pages per day. That seems like a lot but I always lament that I should spend more time reading, go figure.
Reading is the companion to writing for me, something that hopefully keeps my mind active and sharp in a world that seeks to flood us with endless stimulation. I definitely can sense the difference between my patience for long descriptions of landscape in a novel now versus when I was a kid. You can only imagine how much worse it is for people that don’t read.
The “non-readers” is a pretty significant chunk of the population, perhaps even slightly above half of all Americans (See: Over 50% of Americans haven’t read a book in the past year [2022 Study]) I liked that study because it doesn’t include listening to an audiobook, which is not reading, and also doesn’t include people that didn’t finish a book. Reading the first chapter of a novel and then quitting is not reading a book. Pew Research did a survey about this and looked at who in America is not reading at all.
Not many surprises there. Something else to consider: I assume a large percentage of those surveyed are lying because admitting you didn’t read a book is vaguely embarrassing.
I read very few books that are recent, especially in fiction works, as most fiction today is trash and woke garbage mostly written by women. I don’t need to be lectured at by some childless scold when I am reading for pleasure so I read a lot of material that is at least 20 years old, with a few exceptions on the fiction side.
All well and good, I just thought it was interesting to look back at how much I actually read last year. My literary plans for 2023 look like the same thing I have done for the last 47 years of my reading life (I started kindergarten as a solid reader): read and read a lot. Between reading and writing, I hope my mind stays sharp in a world that drenches us with a firehose of limitless, mindless entertainment.
Testify, brother! One of the “benefits” of an Amazon Prime account is that you’re periodically offered “free” e-books, the great majority of which are fem-written.
Of course, the girls aren’t the only culprits. A few years ago, the Critical Drinker did a video in which he self-promoted his action-thrillers. I often enjoy the Drinker, so I bought one. Good Lord, but it was bad. I slogged through the whole thing, but the last two-thirds of it was in “can it get any worse” mode (it did). By the way, did you know that pistols fire something called “shells?” They do — at least in the Drinker’s world. They fire so many that, by the end, the surviving characters should have been essentially immobilized by chest-deep drifts of expended brass. Unreadable.
I suspected his books were crappy, thanks for saving me the time to find out for myself. I get what you are saying about the Amazon prime books, whenever I get the email I point out to my wife that the vast majority are written by women.
Arthur Sido: I’ve tried searching for something to read on Amazon by category. You cannot specify male authors only – I’ve tried. You cannot specify White authors/subjects only – I’ve tried. Any ‘alternative history’ fiction is either about the terrible, horrible, no good very bad imaginary future where either the evil rayciss Confederates or the evil rayciss notsees won a particular war – no such thing about a positive alternative history better than present day Klown World. Any time travel book is written and read by female airheads with absolutely no knowledge of real history, and write drivel as a medium for their soft porn. A search for ‘post-apocalyptic’ or ‘dystopian’ fiction results in page after page after page of ‘books’ written by and for women, or teens, or non-Whites. They have taken over every subject, and Amazon is burying every alternative. One title I’ve recommended to others before (John Michael Greer’s “Retrotopia”) has vanished from Kindle Unlimited and is out of print – I found one copy out there for $158.
May I suggest some newer fiction by author Peter Nealen, former recon Marine. He actually started with a bit of paranormal stuff (I first found him via Larry Correia’s book bomb) but then did some excellent military fiction (started with ‘war on terror’ but moved into other modern conflicts). Has an very interesting WWIII scenario with woke AINO backing the European jihadists. Has another interesting series (Brannigan’s Blackhearts) with former US military turned contractors and dealing with a worldwide NGO with lots of parallels to the WEF. Give him a try.
As a Drinker fan, I am saddened, yet happy I haven’t bought his books.
I go in spurts but should read more books. currently doing something I have never done, rereading a book. Unintended Consequences by John Ross. Amazing how many parts I had forgotten.
I reread a lot of books, I read a ton of books as a kid I don’t remember well and some books are good enough to reread every few years.
I can’t remember the source, but a quote has stuck in my mind for decades: “If you would really know a man, ask what books he has read more than once.”
I have been a lifelong reader too, and when the internet came along I told my wife that “I’ll never watch TV again”. With the demise of real newspapers and magazines, I have to focus on my books. I do worry that the internet has made it too easy to drift into a shortened attention span, leaving me unable to focus without drifting to the next shiny thing. I still have very little patience for podcasts or video lectures; I’m usually two or three minutes in when I’m yelling in disgust: “Give me a freakin’ transcript!”
Oh, and my favorite line from Schopenhauer: “Would that we could buy the time to read them in!”
Likely half my reading each year is code books. The BPVC is 12 books of about 800 pages each and I read that annually. I reread the Safehold series by Weber over Christmas for somedown time. Before that i read across the artic ice which is a good scientific read.
I’ll check out the Safehold books, always looking for decent scifi
Only government schools could make 50% of the population hate to read.
This is why (paritally) we are in this mess, nobody reads. At all. They just click on videos (which are a stupid and slow way to move information most of the time. I can read much faster than you can talk. SHOW me something but don’t just talk on a video. stupid). And nobody backchecks the information, checks sources, looks at other sides. Ridiculous.
Back when newspapers were a thing, I used to read AT LEAST 2 newspapers a day. (from about sixth grade on). I don’t mean skim, i mean READ. Plus books, plus magazines (which all died in the last 3 years, coincidence, i think not). e-books are stupid too. Give me something on paper that can’t be changed or withdrawn or outdated.
People who don’t read are stupid. Oh they might be functional members of society, but they are still stupid. And GAE preys on this. If you don’t read a lot you don’t write well and your vocabulary is small. (in addition to the obvious function that your reading comprehension is very low). It barely even matters what you read, just that you read.
I used to find good fiction by checking out the finalists for the fiction Pulitzer. This introduced me to some great writers. Even years ago, not everything that made this list was worth reading, but there was always something on it that was worthwhile. Adam Johnson and Donna Tartt were two I “found” this way, and that was about the cutoff, 2014 or 2015, before it all turned to woke.
When I was younger I used to read every book to the end, but nowadays I have a rough 20 page rule. If it doesn’t say something to me in that space that compels me to keep going, then I don’t. Life is too short.
Last year I read 31 books, all of them History or Biography. The last Sci-Fi I have read was “Dune” way back in 1976. Never read an ‘E-Book”. I have about 1000 books in my apartment that share the shelves with1000 vinyl records. I have not watched tv for 47 years. I am 69.
Impressive numbers Arthur! I didn’t keep count myself, but I’d estimate 20-22 books completed this year. Oddly it was a “year of the series” for me – one of 10 volumes and one 4 volume series(referred to me by Lord Bison before his untimely passing last year). That was something new for me and kinda fun. I’ve got my eye on the Dune series now (never read any of them and not really a science fiction guy, but I’ve heard nothing but good things about ’em).
At the moment I’m bogged down in a book about Michael Collins and ” the troubles” and the best I can say for that particular book is that it’s an awesome cure for insomnia! I hate not finishing a book, but 2 – 3 pages and my eyes start to cross and I start nodding off. It’s making the backlog waiting to be read collect dust, so I may have put that one in the stack to go to the used bookstore in town for a trade in!
Happy New Year Arthur, and thanks for your great work!
Currently reading “The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy” (1997). Cycles of history and reaction of various generations to historical events. America has been experiencing a Fourth Turning since 2009. This crisis was predicted in 1997 in this book and will reach its crescendo in the current decade.
Pertinent quote:
“The next Crisis era will most likely extend roughly from the middle Oh-Ohs to the middle 2020s. Its climax is not likely to occur before 2005 or later than 2025, given that thirty-two and fifty-two years are the shortest and longest time spans between any two climax moments in Anglo-American history.
“War cycle theorists have drawn similar conclusions. Thompson calculates that “the average interwar interval period” is about eighty years. From this, he concludes: “If we look 80 years beyond the end of the last global war in 1945, the year 2025 appears to represent a reasonable projection of the history evidence.” Modelski and Ferrar have each targeted the year 2030 as the next likely epicenter for a “general” or “global” war. Another scholar of long cycles, Joshua Goldstein at the University of Southern California, agrees that he would “put the highest danger of great power war sometime around the decade of the 2020s.” – Strauss and Howe, 1997
Some recommendations from my 2021-2022 reading:
Great sci-fi series: “Plague Wars” by David Vandyke.
Well written series that covers the response of a community to a financial reset SHTF scenario in the near future is “299 Days” by Glen Tate.
Well written historical fiction and murder mystery series set in 16th century England is “Shardlake” by C.J. Sansom.
Check out James Lafond’s stuff. Good stuff.
Excellent post and comments. I love me some Apocalypse Doom Porn( for that habit I blame Bison) and lately I’ve been binging on Berserk manga. Once it was not my thing, but some twenty-somethings said ‘Pops, you should get into this.’ Sorta like spiritual training pamphlets for the upcoming time change event. The content and context of your blog reflects you being a reader, Arthur. One of the several reasons I am an outpatient here.
I especially like biographies and books on organized crime. Admittedly, it’s been a few years since I read a book for pleasure, as my days are spent trying to survive in this inflationary environment.
I’m not really a sports fan, but I enjoyed reading tennis player Andre Agassi’s autobiography, “Open”.
Also enjoy writing; I used to write many Yelp reviews, but that, too, has been curtailed due to lack of time.