For the last couple of years, I’ve been not only tracking and posting what books I read from month to month, but also keeping an annual count those books. I was happy to see a big jump in that count from 2018 to 2019.
But while I hope to read even more this year, I’ve decided to stop keeping count.
Here’s the thing: The first book I read this year was The Witch Boy, a trade paperback (or TPB, an industry term for a thick comic or collection of a comic series story arc). And among January’s books was The Three Robbers, which is a straight-up kid’s picture book I’d heard really good things about.
And I liked them both. But if I’m trying to track how many books I’ve read each year, should I include comics? And should a picture book that took a few minutes to read be added to the same tally as Seven Blades In Black, whose main story is just under 700 pages long and took me weeks to finish? And is there really even any need to parse each item like that, as if to determine each item’s… what, worthiness to belong on a list together?
Why bother?
So, while I’ll still keep track of what I read from month to month–it’s nice to have it to look back on what I’ve gotten through at the end of the year to be able to talk about the best stuff I read and recommend it to others, and maybe buy books for others that I can personally recommend–I won’t be keeping a hard count any more. All the better to just enjoy what I’m reading as I read it without concern for “officially” counting it (or not).