How to Read 50 Books Per Year Without Really Trying (Even If You’re a Super Slow Reader)
A straight-forward plan for automatically boosting your book count
Published in
5 min readAug 28, 2018
“Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them.” ― Lemony Snicket
I wasn’t much of a book lover in my teenage and college years, but in my early twenties I became a voracious reader. As my writing and film career began to grow, I found myself busier than ever, but I’ve continued to read ~50 books per year for nearly a decade. And I’m not a fast reader: the average American reads 250–400 words per minute (WPM) and I’m on the low end.
Thankfully, reading 50 books per year really isn’t that difficult, even if you’re a slow reader like myself. All it takes is a little discipline and a few quick environmental tweaks.
But first, a nerdy math equation:
50 books x 50,000 words/book = 2.5 million words2.5 million words / 250 WPM = 10,000 minutes10,000 minutes / 60 each hour = 167 hours167 hours / 365 days = 27.5 minutes per day
