I don’t think there’s anything wrong with keeping track of what you’ve read but that often seems (to me) to lead to things like ‘reading challenges’ etc.
I remember back on the corporate alien site on r/books some OP proudly relating how many books they’d read this year and the whole thread became this game of one upmanship of who’d read the most books, who could read the fastest, targets for the upcoming year etc etc. Not one comment mentioned if they’d actually enjoyed any of these books.
When the fuck did reading become a competitive sport? Honestly, my single aim when reading is to enjoy the books I read. If a book takes me 2 days to read or 2 weeks I don’t give a shit. If that means I read less books that year then so what?
So, yeah, record them by all means, review them on a BookWyrm instance by all means but beyond that, just enjoy the book with no pressure.
Yeah, I’m a competitive person by nature and I have to force myself to not keep track of how much I read. It’s silly, I like reading, I see no added benefits to reading “more”, I’d rather read more interesting things, even if slower. But if I keep too much track of my Goodreads account, I start competing with myself from last year and… it makes no sense! But little numbers growing is such a primal push.
I finish like two books a year so that says a fair bit about me, in that my habit is giving out to myself for not reading more.
Yeah, I think a goal can be okay as a rough benchmark for how much you would like to be reading generally. It’s when the goal works to the detriment of your own enjoyment that it’s an issue. I don’t bother counting because I’m reading at a pace that works for me currently.
Yeah I don’t know that I enjoy many books at all, it’s usually that I want to have read them not that I want to read them
The article just feels all weird. I’m not sure why there is such a strong push for/against keeping track of the books you read. It’s just a statistic like any other. Some enjoy it and others don’t, but it feels like each group is trying to convince the other they’re wrong for no real reason.
I personally keep track of books on Goodreads and write reviews for every one. I forget things and writing my thoughts down works for me, and it’s kinda neat to see the books I’ve read that year.
