The realisation that I’m a third of the way through all the books I can ever read has prompted me to take a stiffer line on those I bother with
According to the book review website Goodreads I recently finished reading my 1,000th book. They didn’t notify me of this, there’s no gold star on my profile and my book collection did not break into spontaneous applause (Harry Potter high-fiving Humbert Humbert, the Mitford sisters dancing a celebratory can-can). But I knew the second I finished reading my 1,000th book because I have been watching this day creep closer for four years.
Four years of diligently maintaining my Goodreads account, including two afternoons carefully uploading every book I’d read since childhood. Give or take a few Where’s Wally? books I can be fairly sure that We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie saw me reach this milestone. Assuming I live into my 90s (which my penchant for pasties and panic attacks suggests is unlikely), I will read just over 3,000 books in my lifetime – which doesn’t seem like an especially high number.
One reason I’d been eyeing up my 1,000th book so apprehensively is that it forces me to once again confront the fact that I don’t like a lot of the books I read. Out of the 1,000, I only enjoyed about 700. The other 300 were books I felt I had to read; classics that everyone told me I was a fool to miss, awkward recommendations from people who thought that as a feminist I love to read about rape, GCSE curriculum titles and a misguided attempt to appreciate Tom Wolfe. Another reason I feel a bit queasy about that 1,000th book is that a few years ago my Aunt Liz was diagnosed with terminal cancer. She was 50 years old. When my phone rang with the news, I was waiting for a light to change at a busy road. When I looked down at the book in my hand, my thumb still marking the page, I realised how much Liz still had left to do. Her wedding would have to be brought forward, goodbyes would be said, a funeral would be planned. She would probably never read another book.
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Four years of diligently maintaining my Goodreads account, including two afternoons carefully uploading every book I’d read since childhood. Give or take a few Where’s Wally? books I can be fairly sure that We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie saw me reach this milestone. Assuming I live into my 90s (which my penchant for pasties and panic attacks suggests is unlikely), I will read just over 3,000 books in my lifetime – which doesn’t seem like an especially high number.
One reason I’d been eyeing up my 1,000th book so apprehensively is that it forces me to once again confront the fact that I don’t like a lot of the books I read. Out of the 1,000, I only enjoyed about 700. The other 300 were books I felt I had to read; classics that everyone told me I was a fool to miss, awkward recommendations from people who thought that as a feminist I love to read about rape, GCSE curriculum titles and a misguided attempt to appreciate Tom Wolfe. Another reason I feel a bit queasy about that 1,000th book is that a few years ago my Aunt Liz was diagnosed with terminal cancer. She was 50 years old. When my phone rang with the news, I was waiting for a light to change at a busy road. When I looked down at the book in my hand, my thumb still marking the page, I realised how much Liz still had left to do. Her wedding would have to be brought forward, goodbyes would be said, a funeral would be planned. She would probably never read another book.
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