/lit/ - Literature

I'm not so vain as to count them.

>>2127488
I wasn't really expecting an exact amount.

1 or 2

30ish for me. I'm slow.

Maybe 10 or so. Not counting short story collections because I just kind of pick and choose selections from them.

This year so far 45, so I guess 60.

About 150, including short story collections and novellas and those things. So it's not all novels.

15-20

Sometimes i'll burn through a book in a couple days, sometimes i'll go over a month without reading a page.

Varies based on the year, but I got through maybe 10 this year

about 10 for fun.


I read engineering textbooks/sci papers in the mean time.

It depends on what you define as a book, and what you define as the average of that. I read a lot of random, non novel related things, that collected would probably equal several books, and also started reading collections of stories (i.e., a collection oof Socrates dialogues) which, if you include all together, would equal one book. Would you say your average book is around 300 pages, and counting how many books you read equaling every 300 pages of information you read, or do you only mean novels/biographies as books?

I haven't read many novels in the past year, but i think its a pretty high number if you include all the non-novel material.(this question probably doesn't deserve the philosorapter img, because my argument is more babble than anything else.)

I've read 4 this week which is everything I've read the whole year so far.

>>2127558
Which four were they?

I have read 2 books this year and I'm proud of it.

>>2127564
Lord of the Flies (reread), Hamlet (reread), Ender's Game and Steppenwolf.

I should be ashamed that they're all under 300 pages, but I hope I'll reach at least 20 books by the end of the year.

this year i've probably read around 15-20 books
5 of those were the Song of Ice and Fire books, the rest were assorted shit including the Great Gatsby, Hobbes' Leviathan, Discourse on Social Inequality, etc etc

I've gone through about 10 books in the last 3 months, I'm really gaining pace ever since I looked into speed reading. Makes the experience much more enjoyable

Pic related, the ones I'm working on now. The crying of lot 49 was most excellent, I'll be reading all of pynchon now

Usually one or two books a week.

Different every year - 2011 I've read maybe 10-12 books but thats cuz I got an iPhone and love reading stuff on Stanza and Kindle.

Varies. I've been progressively reading more and more, though. Started with maybe 5-6 books my senior year in high school and now I'm reading closer to 20-25 books/year these days.

Feels smart man.

Hmm... I think I can remember them all - I read 18 this year. I'll give an enjoyment rating so if you have anything to recommend please do.

Dostoevsky - Notes From Underground 8/10
Angela Carter - The Magic Toyshop 6/10
Erlend Loe - Naive Super 7/10
Philip Larkin - High Windows 7/10
Dylan Thomas - Selected Poems 8/10
The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway 9/10
James Joyce - Dubliners 6/10
Molloy - Samuel Beckett 9/10
Waiting for Godot - ditto 7/10
Virginia Woolf - To the Lighthouse 10/10 (now favourite book)
Albert Camus - The Stranger 8/10
WB Yeats - Collected Poems 10/10 (my desert island book)
Raymond Chandler - The Big Sleep 7/10

For school:
Emily Bronte - Wuthering Heights 7/10
Angela Carter - The Bloody Chamber 8/10
Shakespeare - Macbeth 9/10
Joesph Conrad - The Secret Agent 8/10
Graham Greene - Brighton Rock 8/10

>>2127593
How is speed reading enjoyable? I'm genuinely curious because for me the slower I go the more I enjoy the reading process, to the point where if it's something I really enjoy like Joyce or Blake I'll spend 5 minutes or more on each page.

Also, to answer OP's question, about 50 so far this year, but there was a big chunk of summer where I barely read at all because I was watching 4-5 movies a day.

>>2127643

Well, ten books in three months...12 weeks, that's less than one book a week. If average book is 500 pages, that's less than 70 or so pages a day. Not sure I'd call it speed reading exactly, but it depends on what you're reading and for what reason and what your time constraints are, if any. With Blake for example, I don't see how anyone could possibly read his stuff in any way other than how you mentioned.

You could say the same thing about watching five movies a day. How can you watch ten hours or so worth of film at once and process everything?

>>2127697
Ah, that makes more sense to me.

As for the movies, it was the middle of summer break and I wanted time off from literature and philosophy, so they were mostly really bad exploitation and horror movies. It doesn't take a lot of thought to watch "Hell of the Living Dead". Also, running time for those movies is usually only 80-90 minutes. When I watch good movies I spend a lot more time thinking about them and usually rewatch them a few weeks later.

>>2127606
are you a woman?

>>2127775
No, but I am gay. Why do you ask?

>>2127777

quads of the year 2k11

It varies a lot from year to year. It can be anywhere from 2 to 20. This year, I probably haven't read more than 5.

I have read 24 books so far this year, 22 were nonfiction

im at about 55 within the last 10 months

Hm for now I have read about 10 this year, started reading a few, but stoped and now I am still reading War and Peace, which is a monster of a book.

I don't keep score because i'm not a posturing little prick.

>>2127838

Yeah, because "posturing" while anonymous makes sense?

>>2127697
>Implying reading is all I'm doing with my time.
Your math is pretty worthless pal.

Speed reading is more enjoyable because you become less conscious of the individual words which allows you a clearer mental picture.

Obviously you can't read everything at ridiculous speed, you have to scale your speed depending on what you're reading. I'm sick of contending with mouth breathers that pull the whole "Duurrrrrr you need to slow down to remember" card at every mention of speed reading.

That's the thing with speed reading, it's more accurate to say you have a speed range from Xwpm to Ywpm rather than any solid figure. I still read philosophy books at average pace.

>>2128049

>Speed reading is more enjoyable because you become less conscious of the individual words which allows you a clearer mental picture.

That's retarded.

>>2127838
>college-age tripfag
>not posturing
We got a comedian here, folks!

>>2128052
Clearly you have no experience in that regard. Clearly you have no fucking clue about the fundamentals of how the brain absorbs information. It's been shown that a word can be flashed for a millisecond and still be understood.

>>2128052
Calm down please, we've been blessed with the appearance of a self-proclaimed expert and must give him the humble attention and respect that he deserves.

For those thinking that you can't speed read or that you'll never be able to...that's what I thought too. I implore you to do some research about it. Normally from the age of 12 onward your reading speed doesn't progress, meaning most out there are reading at a child's pace well into adulthood. I have no idea why they simply don't teach kids this technique in elementary school, it's that easy.

The technique is simply this: normal reading is limited to the speed at which you speak, because you're vocalizing the words whether consciously in your mind or not. Removing that subvocalization aspect in turn removes that speed cap, allowing you to take in larger chunks of information at a time.

Don't get speed reading confused with skimming.

10-20 required, 20-30 for fun. Trying to bump my fun number up to 50-60, but we'll see how it goes.

>>2128061
http://fc04.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2011/101/3/3/what_are_you_looking_at__by_sensiblerabbit220-d3drr22
.jpg

>>2128083
The thing that takes time in reading isn't absorbing the words or the information they contain, it's understanding the concepts and contexts behind these words. Sure I can read "Waiting for Godot" in about 30 minutes, with my brain processing every word, but that doesn't mean I'm going to understand it the same way as if I go very slowly and think about the implications.

Since everyone here is listing pretty low numbers, why aren't we also listing the books we've read so far this year? That's always fun and generally is a good way to spark discussion. Moreso than just listing numbers, at least.

>>2128061

Yay! It's Bri Newman, foxy librarian. I love her.

I probably read 2-4 books a week, so quite a few a year, I guess.

I don't have a TV, so not much else to do in the Anon household.

Yay! Bri Newman - she's hot.

If I could put my peen0r in any one woman in the world, I swear to god it would be her - not even trolling. Dunno why.

Used to read 1-2 books a week, maybe 1 ever 2-3 weeks if it was rather lengthy (Storm of Swords, Stone of Tears, etc.) Ever since I became an Admin on this RPing site I frequent, that number has dropped... a lot.

Now it's rare for me to finish a book within a month or two. It's gotten pretty bad.

>>2128222
>>2128216

http://sensiblerabbit220.deviantart.com/gallery/27981818?offset=0

Umm... Eleven so far this year, but I have work. I read mostly on weekends, and get some in on lunch breaks, before falling asleep. As you can see I spend too much time farting around on image boards.
Last year I read three or four, but I had many magazines to devour. But one of those books was The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire, then on I was hooked.

Currently in the middle of two and reading the intros to seven others to better sample whats next.
Three out on loan.
I went past my dead Borders today. They gutted her. I imagined renovating it and living there. With my ever growing hoard of books.