I probably read over a dozen a year. It goes in spurts. Sometimes I can't find anything I want to read so I might go a month or two with nothing then hit two or three in one month.

Your the man Shiz!!!! That's awsome!

meh... how many books did you WRITE last year?

--Ray

Medical text and review books and lecture notes: Thousands and thousands of pages.

How many fun ones did I read? Harry Potter, Wicked, The World is Flat.

I probably read at least 30. It could be more, but probably not as many as 50. Unless you count all the children's library books...That's what...3-4 hundred?

Interesting idea Ray but would anyone really want to read a book written by me detailing the secret plot of mutant squirrels to steal my secret recipe for Tomacolatte Brand Tomacolate?

rayb wrote:

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I think book-readers should have something called their "Celulose Footprint" which for every X books you read, you have to write one... It's only fair, you see... a person writes a book over a year, and people read it in a weekend sitting!?

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That would only expand global warming by having more trees cut down, plus it would increase the number of vanity presses exponentially.  Not to mention the fact it would embolden everyone to think that just because they have something to say, that something is really something worth being said.

Here is a better approach... train people to read books as gourmet readers instead of the all-you-can-eat-buffet readers.  This prevents people from sitting down and reading a book in a matter of days, nay hours.  Reading a few pages here or there will better encourage the reader to savor the experience, enjoying the aroma, texture, and ambience of each small set of pages as one would each single fork of foie gras topped with a truffle sauce and beluga caviar as opposed to seeing how much of the Wendy's Triple with everything one can stuff in the mouth before having to chew...

Otherwise, you are going to incense those artists who paint... they spend lots of time on their craft, but are lucky if folks pay 10 minutes attention to it when it ends up on the wall in someone's house or in a museum.  They'll be demanding that everyone start painting to better appreciate their effort.

And don't even get me started on the marble sculptors reaction!

If you count texts for college courses, then probably about 25.

If you count children's literature, then probably close to 1000. But I'm guessing that it wouldn't be fair to count books with fewer than 30 pages, large print, and illustrations on every page.

btw, Ray, my students write every day.  We publish good pieces and give copies to other classes, parents, basically anyone who will take one. You gotta be willing to kill a few trees to become a good writer.

-- Edited by Roper at 21:07, 2007-08-22

(nervously looks around...)
Coco wrote a short article that she thinks would make a good Ensign article, but is too scared to actually mail it in, or whatever you do when you have a potential Ensign article...

I found that book on Amazon a couple weeks ago and thought I'd better not get it... Is it really good?

Let's see, if I can trust my recollection, it was roughly zero books read last year.

From 1967 to 1999 I was a ravenous reader, but then I just started tapering off sharply in 1999 and now it's down to zilch.

I'm fantasizing about reading the old classics and then becoming a writer, but I guess I better get back to my real work.

Not even Hard Sci-Fi!? You should read Larry Niven.

I read some fiction for diversion, especially the works of Douglas Preston/Lincoln Child and Bernard Cornwall.

I'd say two out of three of the books I read are non-fiction, everything from Zero--The Biography of a Dangerous Idea, by Charles Seife, to Dixie Betrayed--How the South really lost the Civil War by David Eicher, to The Spiritual Teachings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, by Richard Geldard.

-- Edited by fear of shiz at 18:22, 2007-08-24

fear of shiz wrote:

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I read some fiction for diversion, especially the works of Douglas Preston/Lincoln Child and Bernard Cornwall.

I'd say two out of three of the books I read are non-fiction, everything from Zero--The Biography of a Dangerous Idea, by Charles Seife, to Dixie Betrayed--How the South really lost the Civil War by David Eicher, to The Spiritual Teachings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, by Richard Geldard.

-- Edited by fear of shiz at 18:22, 2007-08-24

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I'm a big Bernard Cornwall fan.  Read nearly every one of his Sharpe's Rifles series many of which have been made into T.V. shows in the UK.  I never could get into his Starbuck/Civil war series though.