How Many Books Have You Read In Your Life?
So how many books have you read in your life? This is a question I’ve seen posted on the site Ask.fm and this got me thinking…indeed I’m a bookworm, book lover, book enthusiast and book hoarder – I have close to 2000 books – mixed paperbacks and hardcover books in my home, not to mention the many ebooks I keep buying. *sigh* I’m such a lost cause!
So let’s see, if I just take 100 books read in a year (and trust me, some years I’ve read way more than that), considering that I started to read books regularly at the age of 9 – and now I’m 45, that makes on average 3600 books read. But really the actual number is closer to 4000 books, if not more. While I do have a few other hobbies (making artisan designer jewelry for example, is another hobby of mine), reading books has always been and will remain my main leisure activity – especially mystery novels and thrillers, followed by paranormal books (paranormal mysteries and romances).
I’m currently living in a country (Cyprus) where most people don’t like to read (unless you count reading the newspaper as actual reading). I’ve talked with a few friends over the years who literally gave me the same reply, more or less. They all said:
“I prefer to live/experience life rather than read about it”.
While this does sound logical, I don’t fully agree with it. Maybe because I’m coming from a country where people really read a lot of books, have a lot of books on their bookshelves (pretty much everyone in my country of origin has a huge bookshelf that spans across the entire wall, full of books) and I literally grew up with books, learning that reading is a good thing.
And I believe it is. It expands and enhances imagination and creativity and also I think it helps with a better grip on language and learning new words. It enriches the vocabulary and, let’s face it, it makes for a great conversation starter – just like watching the latest movie. Except with movies you don’t really expand your imagination, afterall everything gets served to you ‘on a platter’ so to speak right there screen by screen, while when reading books your mind makes up its own images about what it reads and deciphers.
It would be fun to see a movie with several people’s ideas of a book read – how the characters actually look in each person’s mind, how the descriptions translate into actual images that the mind puts together. I bet everyone’s movie based on the book would be totally different from that of another person.
So how many books have you read in your life, I wonder, and which was the first book you’ve read, do you still remember?
Mine was The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas. I’ve read it I think at least a dozen times, after which I’ve read all other books by this French author. Btw if you haven’t reads this book (and I highly recommend you do, and also get it for your kids to read), the Kindle version of the book is totally free.
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I’ve read (So Far as I can remember) 327 books in my life although that was only since I was born all the way to fourth grade almost fitth
You and I are reading twins. I turned 46 two weeks ago and learned to read at 3. I probably started reading regularly around 9 as well. I can’t remember the first book I ever read. My mother says it was Bambi and she thought I had just memorized her reading to me until she heard me reading other things. I’ve probably read about 3-4000 books too, since I started keeping track on Good reads in 2007 it says I’ve read 505 books which is about 84 a year average. When I was younger and not working full time and read shorter books I probably doubled that average.
I am a HUGE reader, I read so many books my husband has to keep building new bookshelves. When he hit #5 he bought me a kindle and said, “slow it down!” hahaha I love reading, it takes me out of my normal day to day life and gives adventure!
I used to read all the time when I was young. I belonged to several book clubs so I always had a book in my hand. Since I have gotten older I don’t read like I used to. I do miss it.
WOW, hard question. I’d say i’ve read thousands? Let’s not count the hundreds of kid books, lol
I have read so many books in my lifetime that I have literally lost count. I’ve always been an avid reader but, unfortunately, due to being so busy all the time with work and the kids, I never seem to have time to read anymore. The last books I read were the Hunger Games Trilogy and I really enjoyed them.
I completely agree that it has a profound impact on language development and vocabulary. Not to mention that it’s such a wonderful and enjoyable thing to do!
I don’t know how many books I have read but sadly it decreased in adulthood. I enjoyed it a lot growing up but can’t seem to make the time now. I wish it wasn’t the case! I have a memory in elementary school there was this really cool book but I don’t know what it was. It was about these kids and they went into this video game of sorts where they were back in old days basically having to survive and make their own shelter and farm the land but they would never know when they would come out of the game. Sometimes they would be in it for weeks and then suddenly back in their real lives. The end of the book was them being grown up in the “game” and one of them was pregnant and they had built a whole town and figured out how to live, never knowing if someday they would be taken out of that world again! OK longest comment ever!!