Too Many Books, Just Enough Time

There was a time when I used to enjoy having two or three books on the go at a time; but increasingly I'm becoming a one-book-at-time reader. Worse still, from the point of view of my credibility as the editor of an online book magazine, I prefer to wallow in the books I read, rather than speed reading them just for the sake of being able to say that I've read them. For me, books are not trophies to add to my 'have read' list but experiences to absorb. I can read very fast when I have to but it's not an enjoyable experience because, although I come away knowing the plot and able to hold my own in conversation, I have not 'heard' the book in my mind, so I've missed out on the cadence of the author's writing, and the rhythms of the characters and places portrayed.

Bowker (the agency that issues ISBNs in the USA) estimates that about 290,000 books are published each year - and that's just in the USA. Even if you were to split these books up by category and decide to focus on, say, just the 40,000 or so adult fiction titles published in a year, and then you divided that number in half because most books are published in at least two formats (each format requiring its own ISBN and thus counting as a different book), and then divide it in half again on the basis that half the books shouldn't have been published in the first place, and then in half again because at least 50% of the remainder wouldn't be of interest to you anyway, you're still left with over 5,000 books - and that's just the output of one fraction of one category in one year!

So the next time you find yourself saying 'too many books, too little time' - take a deep breath and relax because whether you read a book a day or a book a year you've read less than 1% of the books published each year - so you may as well take the time to enjoy each book to its full and not worry about the other 99%+ you'll never have time for!

Having said that, considering that the general rule of thumb in the USA book industry is that 1/3 of the books bought are never started, and a further 1/3rd are never finished there is definitely room in most people's lives to be more choosy about which of the millions of books in print they should spend their limited time and hard earned money on - which is where BookBrowse comes in. Our simple mission is to wade through the mountains of books published each month in order to identify some of the best and most interesting, and then to give you the information you need to decide which of these are right for you - so you can spend more of your time reading books that you really enjoy, and less on books that you never start or, worse still, put aside unfinished.

Davina Morgan-Witts, BookBrowse editor