Do You Ever Feel Pressured To Read a Certain Number of Books?

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Do you ever feel pressured into reading a certain number of books? I mean, eight books a month? Twelve?

I do.

I feel really guilty when I don't read. I feel even guiltier if I do read, but hardly get anything read. I mean, I have a big TBR. It ain't going nowhere. It just sits there judging me. One day it will collapse. SEND HELP.

I've always been known as a bookworm. I've always seen myself as a bookworm - I sometimes wonder if that's where this comes from. When I was younger, I managed to get through hundreds of books a year, so it always feels strange when I don't. My reading habits are deeply engrained in my life - but it feels more than wrong when I don't read. It almost feels as though I'm a fake bookworm because I'm not reading enough - which in turn makes reading itself a whole load more stressful.

This is one of the reasons I don't do Goodreads challenges - or readathons at all (with the exception of #Victober). I often see people saying that they're reading books they wouldn't normally read, such as comics or novellas or whatever, just to catch up if they're behind schedule. I don't understand. I mean, I don't have a problem with comics or novellas - but why read stuff you don't necessarily want to just to hit a target? I think it's easy to get caught up in the numbers when you're reading and you actually forget about why you're doing it (i.e. to get as far away from reality as humanly possible).

I find I put enough pressure on myself to read without having a specific number to hit. I think putting that pressure on myself ends up taking the fun out of reading. Believe it or not, BOOKS ARE MEANT TO BE FUN. (Well, most of them. I'm not sure about Mein Kampf.)

I think it's important to remind yourself that books are meant to be fun - not just numbers on a graph. If I take a while over a book, or I only read one a month, it doesn't really matter that much, does it? Some books take longer to finish than others. Sometimes I want to read different genres. Sometimes I don't want to read at all. What matters is that I enjoy it - and I think sometimes it's easy to forget that.

Besides, on the bright side, a couple of books a month is more than most people read in a year. Which is sort of nice to hear, but also really sad. Ah. Sometimes I pity humanity.

What do you think?

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