How Many Books?

Ibis and I were discussing books the other day, and he asked me a question that I haven't been able to get out of my head:

"How many books have you read?"

Not this year, not since school; how many books have you read in your life? A little daunting, isn't it? As the question bounced around in my head, titles from years past washed over me: Lovely Bones, On Writing, Me Talk Pretty One Day, Life of Pi, Memoirs of a Geisha, Metamorphosis, Sense and Sensibility, 1984 the entire Sweet Valley High series, Frog and Toad are Friends, Go Dog Go.... I could do this for days.

How do you even count that? I suppose I could use a rough average of one book per month for my entire reading life (starting at age 6, even though I learned to read at 3 or 4). That would account for the school years when I didn't do as much leisure reading as I'd preferred, although I did read a fair amount of textbooks. I have spurts where I'll read several books per month, maybe one per week, but I think one per month is fair.

So. *whips open handy calculator application*

33 - 5 = 28 x 12 = 336.

I know that's not correct. My rough guess at the time was over a thousand, so maybe I should say three books per month. That totals 1008, so I'll let that be my answer.

I've read 1008 books in my life. How about you?


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