As it turns out, my reading is up and down and all over the place almost to an extreme. I’ve given up on reading predictions, reading goals, TBR stacks, and bookish challenges.

When it comes to reading, I go with the ebb and flow of life, cravings, and (sometimes) deadlines. Mostly though, I just pick up a book and read it without a lot of pre-meditation or over-analyzing. Tracking the books I read and trying to at least note when it was that I read them has proved to be most amusing to me.

For instance, between May 21st and November of this year, I read a grand total of one nonfiction book – and that one was a beta project for me. Considering the fact that I read a nonfiction book basically every week last year I was rather horrified with myself when I realized the track record I was producing for 2018.

I decided to read a couple of nonfiction books in November and was just pretty surprised when I looked at Goodreads and saw I read five of them last month. Yeah, that’s right. After over five months of no nonfiction reading (except for the Bible), I polished off five of them without really even trying.

I sit at my computer today – over a third of the way through the month and have to shrug my shoulders at my reading for December. How many books have I finished, you may ask? Zero. In fact, I’ve only read probably a 150 pages altogether during the last two weeks.

Last month I read around 2,362 pages, which equals nearly 79 a day. That sounds way impressive when compared to the average of 15 pages a day I’ve read this month, but when I compare it to my record, which was 1,200 pages in one day….Well? Then it sounds minuscule.

Do you know what my point with all these random stats is? Reading is a tool. A vacation. A joy. And yes, part of my job as a writer. But reading is something I control, not something that controls me. I’m not going to let it stress me out when I don’t get reading in, and I’m not going to feel like a super-human when I catch up with books. Books, reading, words… They’re all wonderful things, but they don’t define me.

This week I’m fine with being chill. And who knows? Maybe next week I’ll swallow books whole. With me you never really know. 😉

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