„I’m a slow reader, but I usually get through seventy or eighty books a year, mostly fiction.“

Stephen King: On Writing, A Memoir of the Craft

Seventy or eighty books a year! What a magnificent number! But wait a minute. Let’s do some basic math.

Stephen King gets through seventy or eighty books a year. Some of them are audio books, so let’s count with seventy books a year. The average book has 64.500 words. That’s approximately 191 pages. Seventy books with 191 pages, that’s … wait a minute … 13.370 pages a year. It looks like pretty big stack of papers. But with 365 days a year, it’s only 37 pages per day.

I’m also a slow reader. One page usually takes me approximately one minute, sometimes even more. Steven King probably gets through at least seventy books a year with only 45 minutes reading a day. Well, now it looks much easier. What about 15 minutes of reading just after getting back from work and then 30 minutes of reading (with a glass of wine) before going to sleep? That seems to be quite comfortable and pleasant way of reading. I think I’ll make it.

I’m a book lover, enthusiastic reader. About one year ago I’ve bought a Kindle – e-book reader designed by Amazon. It’s a handy, lightweight and easy to use piece of hardware. I appreciate almost unlimited free access to books (especially on file sharing servers, of course).

Last year I’ve red dozens of e-books. Some of them were great and I decided to buy hardcover (for example The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak or And Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini). But most of the books were just average and uninspired.

I usually alternate reading e-books with paper books, one after the other. And now, when I’m looking back at last year, I remember paper books better. I remember their covers, fonts and even their old yellowed pages.

Books are not only about their content. I don’t want to underestimate power of a great story. Good writing is by far the most important part of a book. But feeling of good old fashioned book in your hands is still irreplaceable.