Over a recent summer, I tackled a challenge to read 7 books in 7 days. I had a pile of rather short, unfinished books on my shelf and a week with relatively little to do outside of work, so I figured why not. I was in a reading slump and I wanted something to break me out of it.
The week-long challenge was a surprising success. I read a few books I never would have read otherwise, even though I had them on my bookshelf. And because I chose mostly short books, it didn’t feel overwhelming. After that, I felt motivated and energized to read again.
So I took on a “30 books in 30 days” reading challenge.
The first week went by smoothly. The second was a bit of a struggle. I made it, on track, to day 20, and then, as my triumph was approaching—I stopped reading altogether.
I couldn’t keep the stories straight in my head anymore. And I felt like I couldn’t do anything after work or on the weekends other than read. Don’t get me wrong: I love reading. I liked the books I was reading that month. But it was way too much.
Over the past five years, I’ve read easily over 70 books a year, but this was the first time reading felt like a chore, a task, not a pleasure.
Read more, but not like this.
I would encourage anybody to read more, especially considering that 82% of American read 10 or fewer books in a year (according to a poll by YouGov in 2023). Reading can have many benefits. Some that I found mentioned by multiple articles are reducing stress and improving memory, vocabulary, focus, and empathy. It’s also fun!
But I would not encourage people to read on a schedule. Trying to read X number of books in a month or a year is pointless. (And I say that as someone with an 80-book Goodreads goal every year. But that’s easy for me to achieve and I always revise it if I’m falling too far behind.)
Don’t choose books based on length.
It doesn’t matter how many books you read. There is no discernible benefit to reading 30 short novels instead of 15 long ones. The challenge really exposed that to me because I was forced to choose books based on whether I felt I could read them in a day rather than based on how much I wanted to read the book. I found myself researching short novels—and ended up with lots of books on my reading list that I didn’t particularly want to read and never would have read if not for the challenge. And that’s a stupid way to choose a book.
Worse were the books I avoided reading because I was in the midst of this challenge. I ignored my long fantasy books, my classics, and anything in a foreign language because I knew they would take too long to read. Those were books I really wanted to read but the challenge made it impossible.
I ended up reading (and buying) too many disappointing books.
On the one hand, I finally crossed off some books I did want to read, like Beowulf, two Shakespeare plays, and a book of poems by Pablo Neruda. I enjoyed reading The Devil Wears Prada, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, and Convenience Store Woman. But I also read some books that were really disappointing.
I also bought too many books. I hadn’t started regularly visiting the local library at this point, so I spent probably a couple of hundred dollars on this challenge. Only a few of the books I read were already sitting on my bookshelf.
I don’t recommend this challenge to anyone who doesn’t already happen to have a list of 30 short books they want to read.
There are better types of reading challenges.
Would I ever try another reading challenge? Absolutely, but not this kind. I would love to challenge myself to read X number of pages a day, or 90 minutes a day. If the point of a reading challenge is to build reading into your daily habits, then both of those would be way better than trying to read a book a day.
I’d also consider a reading challenge that involves reading multiple genres or expanding the types of books I read—like reading books from authors in different countries, or books set in other time periods or places, or an A-Z reading challenge, where you’d pick 26 book in order by author surname.
