10,000 pages
A few months ago I had an ambition to read 10,000 pages before the end of the year. I’ve now done it. Here are the books. I like doing counting pages rather than books because I’d rather not be incentivised to read ‘little’ books. There’s some comfort reading in here (Fifth Elephant), quite a lot of ‘turn your brain off’ books, but also some that I wouldn’t have tried before like White Tiger, and the Hilary Mantel books (and indeed, A Memory Called Empire).
I’d like to read more next year (I only started this around the summer), but it’s actually more true to say I’d like to be doing less of the rubbish that I do instead of reading: scrolling, faffing, boredly eating.
| Title | Pages |
|---|---|
| A Giant Within | 100(unfinished) |
| Wolf Hall | 672 |
| The Unquiet Spirit | 217 |
| Deathwatch Omnibus | 1239 |
| The Beast Volume 1 | 771 |
| Bring Up the Bodies | 528 |
| White Tiger | 336 |
| Blackadder | 455 |
| The Mirror and the Light | 879 |
| Triggers | 272 |
| The Fifth Elephant | 464 |
| The Vim Textbook | 513 |
| Unbound | 304 |
| Vainglorious | 334 |
| Mistborn 1 | 647 |
| Mistborn 2 | 786 |
| Mistborn 3 | 768 |
| Unruly | Still reading |
| The Magician | Still reading |
| GTD | 352 |
| A Memory Called Empire | 465 |
| Total | 10102 |
Update: Reflections a year later
- I can remember some of these books quite well (White Tiger, Vainglorious, Mistborn ), and some not at all (A Memory called Empire, Unbound, The Beast, Deathwatch Omnibus). Certainly my ‘things I remember per page’ is quite low for any of the books that were over 500 pages. There doesn’t appear to be an obvious reason why some would be more memorable than others (It would be nice to say ‘the fancy high literature ones were more memorable’ but actually not.
- My target for 2024 was 20,000 pages, which is as of October, looking quite doable - it’s a massive increase over the last few years and I’m very proud of myself.
- In hindsight, relatively few of these gave me a strong emotional reaction. I think that’s true of most of the books I’m reading this year as well. I might put a column in my spreadsheet for ‘did this make me laugh out loud or cry’. I certainly think that the statement ‘I read ten books this year that made me cry’ is a much stronger statement than “I read 20,000 pages this year.”
- Update on the previous point, in an effort to find books I might have a strong emotional reaction to - I looked up various awards. I saw the 2022 Hugo award for best novel managed to beat both the excellent The Galaxy, and the Ground Within and the wonderful Project Hail Mary so I was quite excited - I’ve now realised that the actual winner in 2022 was the sequel to the very unmemorable A Memory Called Empire I talked about above…
- The vast majority of these were ebooks, which has prompted me to admit that while I much prefer physical books at an emotional level, I am vastly more likely to actually read them if I have an electronic copy.