Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

Do you think there's a growing pressure now to finish a book, then the next one, and the next one?

Has the emphasis moved from quality reading to quantity reading?

Has the focus moved from considering the meaning of what you've just read to zipping on to another opening chapter?

Book reviews, reading challenges, data on reading habits, competitions for the number of books read per annum - all can push you to read more. That's good. But do you find yourself galloping to finish a book just so you can get along to the next one; picking short books over long ones; choosing easy reads over complicated ones?

Has the race for The End come to dominate your reading habits? What do you think?

Hmm, the first year I did a reading challenge I had no idea how much I read, so picked a number of 100! And then found myself reading lots of short books to try and hit my target (technically I did, but couldn't find one of them on here, so it looks like I only read 99!), it turns out that my happy medium is about 50, so I can still read the long books that I enjoy. I do find that I read less magazines so I can hit my book target.

I don’t often participate in reading challenges or competitions for number of books read, and fortunately there are many ways to participate on Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ. A book being chosen as a group read in one of my groups makes me more likely to read it, and sometimes I spend more time reading than I otherwise would in order to get through a group read in the allotted time.

That can be a good thing and a bad thing. It has broadened my reading palette, but it has also led to reading some not-really-worthwhile books. From time to time I’ve chosen an easy or quick read to fulfill a challenge, such as in this group’s Genre Challenge. I really like the Genre Challenge because it encourages me to think about genres I don’t normally read, and try something new, but if the genre chosen really doesn’t appeal to me, I feel free to give it short shrift.

Maybe I’m just too old to be controlled by social media, but I don’t usually feel pressure to read something that doesn’t hold my interest and I certainly am not driven to rack up numbers. I do enjoy looking back at the end of the year over what I’ve read, and am grateful to Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ for making that possible.