I Read One Hundred Million Billion Books This Year

By Adalyn Lowe

“Yearly Book Wrap-Up” reads the video title. “I read ONE HUNDRED books this year”. You scroll down. The next videos have read even more! Two hundred, three hundred books? How is that possible? You didn’t count how many you read, but you’ll take an educated guess and assume it is much, much less. How could these people possibly have so much to read at their disposal? Where did their time come from?

The phrase “quantity over quality” is certainly on full display on book-related social media. People laud over the sheer amounts of books they were able to consume in a certain period of time. It’s impressive, naturally no one could disagree with that. But allowing reading to become a competition takes away from the purpose of it. 

The purpose of reading is to learn, to love, and to immerse yourself in a book. In its nature, it is a highly individual act, bar book clubs and online discussion. It should be something that you do for yourself at your own pace, for the maximum amount of enjoyment you can wring out of it. There’s so much variety when it comes to the activity that it should be very customizable. Reading is for your personal gain, whether that comes in the form of enjoyment or pursuit of knowledge.

Reading such a high quantity of books is simply unrealistic for most people. So this quantity boils down to a few factors: skimming or quickly reading very short books that you don’t truly enjoy.

Recently, there was a TikTok that went viral on BookTok that featured a reading influencer telling the audience she skimmed her books. She skipped right over the descriptions and action, and went right for the dialogue. People were livid: this doesn’t count as true reading! And yes, I agree. This is reading for the point of completion. By skimming, you are naturally able to consume the books at a faster rate, another tick for your climbing Goodreads number!

Online, there is this validation that comes with high numbers. We see this with followers, likes, and comments typically. But to reading social media, this correlates with how many books you can consume. The higher number you have, the more dedicated a reader you must be! And this high number and its correlation with dedications leads to all the more people who will click.

Then, the people read very short books just for the numbers. If one is choosing the shortest books to add, are they truly enjoying it? Reading becomes a race— an addiction to seeing the numbers climb in any means possible. People choosing books for length does not correlate to enjoyment. Here, the prioritization of numbers harms the activity as a whole. 

This pressure will eventually lead to the lack of love in reading. If the activity does not prioritize enjoyment over numbers, the fun will eventually die. Because reading such high quantities is a difficult feat, and nowhere near a sustainable one. If you read such a high number this year, you should better hope you can read more the following year. And even more the year after that! 

So please, don’t stress over the number of books you can power through in a week. As long as you’re enjoying the things you’re reading, your love of the activity should persist. There should be an emphasis on reading for yourself, instead of for numbers.