It is probably in the 200-400 range. Most of them are non-fiction though. I have probably only read 30 fiction books in my life (other than being forced to read them via secondary and post-secondary education).
Yeah I mean just purely on your own. No forced reading of textbooks those don't count. Everyone's got to that.
I started reading Dick Tracy books in the sixth grade followed by the Hardy Boys as far as I can remember. Then I remember reading the entire John Carter Warlord of Mars series that they are now making into a movie. The classic kids books, Treasure Island and stuff like that. Tarzan series, tons of comic books (at ten cents a pop) Mad Magazine, Sherlock Holmes collection, Almost all of Poe, Lots of Twain, All of Asimov's sci fi, hundreds of other sci fi books, all of Alan Watts, All of Castenada, lots of Greek philo, etc. Gita, lots of oriental philosophy, Bucky Fuller, etc, etc, hundreds of books. Right now I'm reading the Story of Philosophy by Will Durant, Egypt Before the Pharaohs, and Shop Class as Soulcraft. My wife gets mad cause I have books laying around everywhere. Just gave away three or four boxes.
Probably completely read ~65. Probably close to double that including books I started but didn't finish. (reading particular chapters, excerpts, didn't enjoy the book, etc.)
I've read, on average, a book a week since I learned to read in first grade when I was 6 years old. So, give or take some, 1092 books. I think I did the math right. Maybe I would be better at math if I didn't read so much lol. A lot of those books were fluff so its not really anything to brag about. I read compulsively. In school I read to cover up social anxiety. I've read a lot of great books, but I've also read a lot of shit books just because they were lying around and I didn't have anything better to read.
I'm probably around the same amount as Meliai... There was a summer that I lived on the beach that I read 2-3 books a week...
In the books I owned, alone, not library borrows, at the height of my collection was 3000 books. Every one had been read at least once. I'm now at a tenth of that, but using a library heavily. Add what I read as a kid....and it just gets beyond my math.
At present I only own 300+ books. Shameful considering some of the responses to this thread. But I started reading books when I was in 3rd grade because I thought it made me out to be older and wiser than my age. It was rough going because of course, I read them and could repeat them but had little or no idea what they meant. I continued reading and now am doing that on a professional level. If I had to estimate, I would say I have read around... Jesus, a lot. I have no idea. Speculatively, I'd say nearest a thousand or possibly more. I only own my favorites. I have to admit that most of these books are trash(55%). Whodunnits, crap horror novels, short story compilations, etc. -BlkBks
more than the usual person. i can surely say it's above 1000, because i spent my entire childhood reading, reading, reading.
Me too. I would probably have read well over a thousand books,most of them when I was a child / teenager. Still reading though, and still love it! Currently reading the Ice and Fire Series by George R R Martin.
Thousands, I used to be very fast in reading and I collected old books for some years. About 10 years ago I gave away about 20 big boxes of mostly fiction and old literature books, now I keep only non fiction books.
I try to read 3 books per week, and have maintained that as a minimum rate since I was approximately 9 years old. Nine years hence, that totals out to >1,410 books, insofar as that 3 book/week rate has remained constant. As an ardent and assiduous bibliophile, one of my life's goals is to be able to honestly say that I have read >5,000 books. I'm constantly trying to augment my reading speed––with the objective of having a speed of ~1,000 words per minute, therefore enabling myself to read 7-8 books/week––so I'll presumably hit 5,000 books soon enough. Thereafter, I guess 8,000 books would make a nice goal to set.
