Inside a Dog

So here I am at 40 years old, having read about 250 books so far. And with a goal fo 500 by 50, that gives me ten years to read 250 books. Sounds reasonable, I think.

In Jane Smiley's "13 Ways to Look at a Novel", she says that the average reader reads at about 30-40 pages an hour. So a regular novel of 300 - 400 pages should take about 10 hours. At first, you, like me, are thinking "yeah right." But given that at best I read about 5-6 hours a week, that plays out to about two weeks for your average novel and 6 weeks for "War and Peace". Which for me is fairly close to the mark - if a little agressive. So with 52 weeks a year, that should be about 25 books. And 25 books times ten years equals viola! 250 books!

But here I am in late April 2007 with only 5 books to my credit. Time to get crackin'.