Wow, looks like you're going to pass your challenge, or at least nearly! I've set myself the same 50 book stretch goal, but I'm only at 21 books ("At your current pace, you're 16 books (33%) behind schedule."). I made the "mistake" of adding a few heavyweights to my reading list, such as a 500+-page non-fiction book stuffed with endnotes. Maybe I should pad this with a bunch of 50-page motivational business books or something ...

P.S.: There should be a page-count challenge rather than or in addition to the book-count challenge, really.

Hal wrote: "Wow, looks like you're going to pass your challenge, or at least nearly! I've set myself the same 50 book stretch goal, but I'm only at 21 books ("At your current pace, you're 16 books (33%) behind..."

Ha. I'm still slightly behind. I need to read a few novellas to catch up.

I was looking at everyone's challenge progress a couple of days ago. I honestly have someone on my friends list trying to read 500 books this year. And he's not behind schedule reading either. How the heck do you do that? When do you eat and sleep?

I used to read about 70 a year back before I had a kid, but I don't have such lofty goals anymore when I only get 2 hours to myself each day. You know, though, if you count kids books, I read about 15-30 a week, so I guess I technically could make quite a goal for myself. :P

I agree, though, a page-count challenge would be interesting.

There should be a word-, nay, character-count challenge to catch out the children book cheaters ;-)

70 per year is quite impressing already, that's a kill count of about 3 books every two weeks. I'll never know how much or how fast I read at the peak of my reading career, sometime during school I guess, since I haven't been keeping records of when I read what. Is why I'm trying to push myself even harder now :-)

I have two hours of commute every day, so that helps, plus bits of time here and there. I'm not a very fast reader, I'm afraid ... I can speed-read a little when I set my mind to it, but that takes the fun out of reading for me. I only use it when a book has very tedious passages.

I'd be interested to see the reading list of your 500 book per year friend. At this pace, I suspect speed-reading or very slim books or both :-)

Hal wrote: "I'd be interested to see the reading list of your 500 book per year friend. At this pace, I suspect speed-reading or very slim books or both :-)"

I definitely find it more pleasurable to read at a normal pace. Well, there is the rare page-turner that has me nearly going blind with how fast I'm attempting to read. Paul Antony Jones tends to kick me to near-blindness speeds. Otherwise, I like to savor a book.

This is the 500 books guy: http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/23.... He has a smattering of longish books along with juvenile books that you can get through in a couple of hours. He's currently reading Coraline which is a legitimate book just as most juvenile books are. But the transition from book to book has to be dizzying. I don't even like to read books of short stories for that reason.