The joys of a long book
Friday, May 31, 2019 at 08:06AM If I have a complaint about the Goodreads social network for readers*, it's about their Reading Challenge. Goodreads encourages members to set a goal for the number of books they will read in a given year. My goal is 36 books and I have read 19. (Actually, I have read 17, one was counted twice, and I listened to audio version of another.)
What the challenge does not recognize is that books come in lots of different lengths. And this has been my year, it seems, for re-reading tomes:
- Alaska by James Michener 1152 pages
- The Journeyer by Gary Jennings 1024 pages
- Winds of War by Herman Wouk 898 pages
- The Stand (uncut edition) by Stephen King at 1348 pages
While I would not trust an English Major's math, I show these four books alone come to 4422 pages. The average fiction book is about 350 pages. So my 4 books are the reading equivalent of nearly 13 books.
This reading challenge is, of course, self-imposed. And no one but me probably sees or cares about whether I meet it or not. It is perhaps even ironic, given my long-standing criticism of extrinsic motivation in getting kids to read, that I even sign up. Even I admit that as complaints go, this is pretty damn petty. But it does kind of bug me that I cannot choose a total number of pages read rather than number of books.
I will however continue to read long books. Why? Like a long hot shower or a week-long hike, there are some works that are so pleasurable, so engaging you really don't want to see them end. A good book has characters you know you will miss when it ends, places that are so interesting you wish to continue to explore, situations so intriguing you need a few more twists and turns.
For those of us who read for pleasure, there are no deadlines. Perhaps book club members might disagree, but while I like checking off the "read" button in Goodreads, I relish the freedom to do so at my own pace.
Provided, of course, I am on track to complete my reading challenge for the year.
* Steve Tetreault has a great blog post about Goodreads on the AASL blog.
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