tl;dr
To resolve as "YES", I will start and finish 52 books (non-audiobooks) before the end of 2024
(Yes, I'm betting "YES" on myself on this market)
The Goal
I want to do more reading again and I figure finishing a book a week* sounds like a good goal. So the plan is to start and finish 52 books in 2024.
The Details
*Note this doesn't mean I'll read a book every week. The goal is to just average a book a week. If things go well, sometimes I'll finish more than one in a week. Some might take me longer. I also tend to read multiple books during the same period so there might be more than one "active" book during the week. Here are some more details:
What counts as a "book"
Only reading (not audiobooks) counts but it can be a physical paper book or an ebook.
The book has to be of a decent size on the order of at least 100 (paper) pages.
I don't typically read books shorter than that so I don't think it'll be an issue.
The book can be fiction or non-fiction.
I tend to read much more non-fiction and technical books. In theory, these can end being faster to "read' because there are more diagrams and such. But I find from my experience it tends to even out where it takes more time for me to "digest" sections of technical books.
It can't be a book I've read recently; ideally something completely new to me.
There might be some books I've read a long time ago (think high school & university) that I might like to read. I think it makes sense to count these.
I won't count when I'm just skimming through a book.
I'll do this a lot with technical books and mostly the ones I've already read.
Resolving "YES"
I begin and finish reading at least 52 books in 2024. These books must start in 2024 (not before) and the 52nd book must be completed before the start of 2025.
Resolving "NO"
I finish less than 52 books when 2025 starts. Books don't count as "fractionally" complete; incomplete books count as "0".
My History
I've been tracking how much I read for the past couple years. This past year I read only ~20 books completely. This past year definitely felt too little reading for me and even had to pick it up towards the later half of the year. The year before, I read about 40 60 different books. (EDIT: Realized I misremembered and finished about 40 halfway through 2022, but only ~20 more for the last 6 months of 2022 for a total of ~60 books in 2022.)
Changes This Year
I should be starting a new job in January of 2024 and I'm planning to be commuting some of the week where I won't be driving. So I think I'll have a bit more time to dedicate to reading. I also plan to sign up for at least one digital subscription service where you can access their library of technical books (like from Manning or O'Reilly Media) which I think will make it easier for me to find and read more.
But who knows what 2024 will bring :D
Related questions
Since @Kraalnaxx asked, I've started & completely read 22 books so far
I technically finished 3 other books, but I started those in 2023 so I'm not counting them (in accordance to the rules I made for this question/market).
I've been tracking & posting on my site here: https://www.victorsothervector.com/books/ This also lists the books & how long it takes me to finish from 2022 to today. Repo for the site can be found here: https://github.com/MrGeislinger/victorsothervector/
Also, here's an image from that site that I updated to include how many books I started for each year. So technically isn't how many I *finished* but should give the right of where I am right now.
Finished first book of the year! "How Google Works" (just in time to start the new job tomorrow 😄)
I'll have to find a better way to record when I start & finish books (a Google Sheet probably be the simplest), but for now, I've been recording it as changes on the commit history on my GitHub profile's README
@EmeraldPham Yep! I actually just started this year reading through Libby. It's mostly been fiction books since a lot of the technical books aren't available at my library (in ebook form).
Overall, I likely keep using Libby for books I can get through there but it's definitely more of a challenge for me to read on a phone (I want a bigger screen since I like to have the text small to read more on a page). When I can, I'll sometimes just read Libby books through my computer over my phone.
But there is an advantage of reading on my phone when I'm out and about like waiting to pick up my kids from school.
@VictorsOtherVector Are you a kindle person? For Kindle compatible books, Whispersync might be a good option for reading the same book on your phone as on your eReader, although I found the organization frustrating and the frequency at which it syncs pages to be too irregular, when I used a kindle and the kindle app on iOS. It would always lag three to four pages behind, sync wise, probably due to the aggressiveness at which iOS kills background apps.
@EmeraldPham I do have a Kindle 8th gen (barebones: no reading light but w/Wi-Fi) but I rarely use it now. It's just too small to fit much text on a page and I've tended to read technical books where seeing the diagram is useful.
I do have a Remarkable 2 tablet that I use daily between reading ebooks, papers, and notes basically since it was released in 2020. It would be amazing if I could read through Libby on it but doesn't look like that's going to happen without deeply modifying the software. For now, I will sometimes find a book on Libby to start reading it then end up getting my own version on my Remarkable.
If I didn't have that tablet, I'd expect a Kindle Scribe would basically fit the same need which would fix the Libby problem. But for now, I don't see it worth doing; I only just started using Libby for myself and only read a handful of books on Libby. But if Kindle comes up with a colored E Ink display sometime soon, I'd be pretty tempted to ditch my Remarkable.
Or maybe a foldable phone would fix my "little screen" problem with Libby :D
@VictorsOtherVector Hmm. Would sending the ePubs from books that offer them to your Remarkable be an option? I think much of the time they’re actually drm free, and depends greatly on the honor system, at least when it came to importing them to Kindle. I wonder if the DRM becomes evident elsewhere as I have strong memories of time limited epubs from somewhere.
@EmeraldPham I think they all export with DRM on Libby, at least from my experience (and what's currently in my queue on Libby), which means I can't read them on my Remarkable. Basically the DRM is to keep a time limit. I think Kindle supports this natively.
I haven't had too many issues getting an epub or PDF of many of the books I want to read. There seems there are more availability in purchasing DRM-free ebooks these days. This is why I've liked looking at manning.com since they sell DRM-free versions of their technical books.
But I also lean towards a physical paper book when I can, avoiding the whole issue. I've probably read more than 5 times more physical books compared to ebooks.