[mike978]

A couple of my favorites from this year, I read a lot (50 to 100 a year)

Fiction:

- What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver

- Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky

- A Man with One of Those Faces by Caimh Mcdonnell

- Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

- A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine

- Antimatter Blues by Edward Ashton

- Where the Body Was by Ed Brubaker and Sean Philips

Nonfiction:

- Exiles by Preston Sprinkle

- Jesus and the Powers by N. T. Wright & Michael F. Bird

- With All Its Teeth by Joshua S. Porter

- In Praise of Shadows by Junichiro Tanizaki

- A Tale of Love and Darkness by Amos Oz

Copenhagen(play) by Michael Frayn done by BBC Radio, not really a book, but it's great. https://archive.org/details/michael-frayn-copenhagen

[teleforce]

Asking for myself, is there any trick or strategy to achieve reading 100 books per year, are you retired, or part-time employee. Is hard to imagine a full-time employee to read that many books in one single year?

[edanm]

Not the parent, but I am a full-time employee (I run a software business but work at it full time). I also read usually 90+ books a year.

The main "trick" is that the majority of books I read are audiobooks, usually at 2x or even 3x speed. And I'm just always reading, or listening to a podcast. There is a lot of slack time in which you can't be doing something else, and I use it for books. E.g. getting up in the morning and arranging food for my kids for school, or doing the dishes, or walking to/from work, or going to the gym, running to buy groceries, etc.

It really doesn't take that much time to read a lot. Say you want to read 52 books a year - that's a book a week. Depending on what you read, the average book is 10-20 hours on Audible, so let's say 15 hrs on average. If you read at 2x speed that's 7.5 hours of listening time per week, or roughly an hour a day. For most people that is easily achievable just with their commute to work.

[paulcole]

I’m 42 with a full-time job and am at 103 books read so far this year.

The tricks are to put a lot of time in it and always have a surplus of interesting books on hand. I spend around $2k a year on Kindle books (if I talk to someone and they mention a book they like, I’ll usually just buy it) and make reading a daily habit.

I read on average an hour a day on weekdays and two or more hours on weekends. Reading is one of the things I enjoy the most and has been for my entire life.

[edanm]

Out of curiosity, do you also listen to audiobooks?

And dammit, I thought I read a lot, and here you are beating me.. I'm only at 101 this year... :)

[paulcole]

Audiobooks very rarely. Only if I’ve heard the “performance” of it is good. The last couple I remember were Great Gatsby read by Jake Gyllenhaal and Devolution read by Judy Greer. I live in the Pacific Northwest and listened to that one while trail running.

I do really like podcasts though and am at 360 hours listened this year, almost exclusively while running, walking, or doing chores around the apartment.

[mike978]

I'll do audiobooks while I do the grocery shopping or drive. And some of the books are kind of cheating as there are always a few graphic novels or 90 or 150 page books. But even as a parent I can find some time by cutting down screen time.

Also even though I enjoy reading a lot, I find more isn't always better, but I've been trying to survey some topics - fascism, Christian Nationalism, etc. If I really want to get something out of what I'm reading or if it is a complex topic I have to slow down.

[cinntaile]

They don't read, they listen. The title specifically asks for books you read so I'm not sure why they mention them.

[edanm]

I also read A Tale of Love and Darkness this year, it was great.

And A Desolation Called Peace, or really that series, is one of my favorite SF reads of the last 10 years, I've recommended it often.