Because I do mostly romance cover art, I try to keep up with hot topics, what romance readers like and don’t like, preferably about covers. Tonight, while looking for those hot topics, I stumbled on a discussion about reading records.

When I was 9 or 12 years old, I started a reading record of my own. I listed the books I read by title, author, date, and number of pages, etc., and every time I finished reading another book, I’d add it to the list. I did this, of course, with the intention of reading every single book in the library–every single one, mind you–or die trying. I kept it up for about, oh I don’t know, a few months and then stopped cold turkey. I never even bothered to try again, though I thought about it. Often.

I had no idea there were others more anal than me.

Romance readers are voracious. VORACIOUS. They gobble books up by the pound, which is why romance writers do fairly well; they have a demanding audience, hungry for each new book. In fact, romance is probably the best-selling genre there is, and many writers use it as an “in” before going mainstream. Many best-selling romance authors eventually move away from the genre as they write more suspense or mystery or horror or sci-fi. They often leave their romance reading fans disappointed. “We want more romance from you, damnit!” When their favorite authors go mainstream, they have less to read, and that’s not good!

But as much as romance readers read, I was still surprised to see the numbers stated in the discussion. One woman announced having read 375 books in one year, which was actually slightly less than the year before. Now, with 365 days in a year, that leads us to the obvious conclusion that this woman has been reading at least one book every single day of 2005.

I cannot imagine reading that much, that often. The thought of it gives me migraines. I mean, I love reading, but I’d go blind if I didn’t go outside every now and then and look at something further away than my arm can reach. I’m practically going blind right now because of the 3-5 books a weekend I used to read as a teenager.

Still, 375 books every year. Reading them, then recording them. I hear some people even use spreadsheets, so I can imagine if there was a column for number of words or pages, you could get a frightening tally of the total number of words or pages you’ve read in your entire life. Oh, my God. I don’t want to know!

Even if I did nothing but read all day, I don’t think I could finish that many books in a year. Of course, with my goal to read everything on the banned list, I doubt I can go through a single classic book as quickly as most people could go through five romances back to back.

I do like the idea of starting a new reading record, though. I just have to limit myself to something like 25 books a year. It sounds much more doable and leaves me some time for a little real-life romance of my own.

Plus, I’m a slow reader.

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