Another Year, Another Reading Goal

Since I embarked on my Great Books Project six years ago, my life has been enhanced in immeasurable ways by a renewed devotion to reading. Well, not entirely immeasurable, since I have kept track of every book I have read since 2003 (439 so far).

Last year's goal of reading 100 books was a great success, and the quantifiable nature of the endeavor made it easier to motivate myself and to track progress. However, it resulted in a notable preference for reading slimmer books. In an attempt to correct that for this year, I am setting a different sort of goal:

I will read 30,000 pages in 2009.

Sounds daunting, no? But figuring the average length of the 105 books I read in 2008 was ~300 pages, this should require no more time or dedication than last year's goal. I'm likely to be in Kuwait for about five months in 2009, so I should have at least as much time to fill with reading as I did in 2008. It works out to be about 100 pages per day, 6 days per week. And as success is measured in pages, rather than books, there should be no inherent bias toward either longer or shorter volumes. I'll still track the number of books read here, but also plan to take monthly accounting of pages read.

Here's to a wonderful year of reading! Happy New Year!