Just a place for me to post random questions to tell you my opinion and to see what you think.
Do page numbers freak you out?
Before I started blogging I can say no, I didn’t care if a book was 500 pages or 100 pages. Sometimes I felt the longer the book the better because if it’s a good story I would hate for it to end so soon. I remember reading a few historical romance books that were 400 pages or more and devouring every single page.
After I started blogging I become more aware of page numbers and tend to panic when I see a number that is over 400, Why? Maybe because I have more of a time line to read a book or maybe because I have found so many good books that I want to read. Since I am such a slow reader and sometimes my time is limited to read with the little ones it’s quicker for me to read short ones, 300 pages or less… Is it fair ?t No, I might be missing out on an amazing book because the pages numbers do sort of freak me out.
How do I fix this? I am not sure, maybe I can time myself to see how long it takes me to read a few pages and then figure out how long a book will really take me to read if it’s 400 pages. That might take away some of the stress and panic knowing, for example, a 400 page book might take me 5 days to read give or take how much time I have. This would help me schedule my time and understand that a book that is 400 or more pages can be read, just need to set the time aside to read it. Does this sound like a fun way to read? Not really but since I want to “READ ALL THE BOOKS” I think a schedule of some kind or knowledge of a reading timetable will allow me to read more and stress about pages numbers less.
So my answer is YES page numbers do freak me out but I think now I figured out how to fix that!
Do Page Numbers freak you out?
Have a great day and Happy Reading
(regardless of page numbers) ๐
Yes definitely! Though yes I guess this is me so I shouldn’t really get freaked out cause a book will take me a few days to read! I find I read physical books slower though, so that often freaks me out! But kindle/Goodreads page counts often feel wrong to me anyway!
My next post about page numbers will be about Physical Books and ebooks because I read regular books A LOT SLOWER than ebooks and I don’t know why.
YES! Page numbers totally make my panicky ever since I started blogging. Mostly because my schedule has always been pretty tight and I’m not a fast reader. So if I saw a book was 400+ pages, I’d have a panic attack. This year, I’m trying to schedule fewer *must* reads so that I can read books liked Burned or Ever After and really enjoy them rather than plowing through because I have another book I have to get to. I blog for fun and stressing out over 400+ page reads is NOT fun. (ask me how my plan is working so far this year *ha*) This is a great post, Michelle!
Lol I wasn’t taking any MUST reads either and yet I have a bunch of MUST reads! So I am totally with you, my plan wasn’t working either ๐
Page numbers doesn’t freak me out. In fact, I hardly ever have book stress.
Reading is such a lovely thing to do, and it shouldn’t have anything to do with stress. I don’t read nearly as many books as all you other readers(seriously, I read like two books a month), but I love reading, and I read whenever I want to.
I think you wouldn’t be as freaked out by page numbers if you didn’t feel the need to have so many books read so fast.
Good luck with getting over the page numbers! (:
– Love, Felicia
I use to be like that when I was only reading one or two books a month but now doing this I love reading a lot of books but the length freaks me out only because I want to read so many books ๐
I am more likely to pick up shorter books, but I really don’t mind big books and don’t avoid them. I’m a pretty slow reader, but since I have a lot of time to read, I can get through one pretty quickly. Sometimes longer is better if there’s a lot of world building type stuff going on, but in realistic books, I find that 400+ is a bit much, and rarely pick those up.
See you say you are slow and I get you are home reading all the time but I would have said you were a fast reader. Just because of all the books you read. However I have ADD (I am positive I do lol) so I get distracted easy. Sometimes a 400+ books isn’t filled with enough stuff to make it good or want to spend the time anyway. So I think I tend to stay away from them because I worry I am wasting time.
Thanks for stopping by Angie!
Yeah, I totally avoid long books – even the ones I really want to read. Its just that they take so much longer and I really want to get to ALL THE BOOKS LOL. I get over it periodically though and its 50/50 on whether the books are good or bad – so I don’t think length is an indicator. Which means I have to find a way to at least try the long ones. I tried something like you’re talking about, but as soon as life happened I got so behind my plans that I ended up giving up. :/ its a never ending battle! Awesome post !!
I know, as much as I would love to set aside a few hours a day it’s hard sometimes to even get an hour in. I guess with everything we read we just need to at least save the long reads for when we know we can spend an extra day or two on it if needed.
They don’t freak me out too much, although I do think at times if a book is too long it will slow me down… so yeah. ๐ I sed to like the epic reads but now I seem to avoid them, maybe I’m just not sure I want to jump into anything that long and involved. Still I’d like to get into some if I could find the right ones. And I agree with the comment above, it’s not so much the pages maybe as just not time. Work gets in the way. ๐
I agree life gets in the way sometimes, as long as my book is on my kindle every so often I will sneak a read at work ๐ but I find long books also slow me down, I just realized that.
Michelle, don’t laugh but when I was younger and money was tight..I would go into a book store pick books I liked and select the ones with the most pages in them. I read so darn fast and I wanted them to last longer. As a result I read a lot of novels with 500-1800 pages..LOL
LOL that’s great. It’s exactly how I felt when I would get my book, always went for the fantasy because they were always really long.
I try not to stray away from longer books, but with college I have a very limited time to read so I have noticed that I choose shorter books. I don’t read as much Jodi Picoult as I used to. I want to finish at least two books this week before I go home.
My goal is to try to read two books a week and so far it’s hard, my real life just doesn’t allow for me to read longer. So I have found myself grabbing the shorter ones in the winter and longer ones in the summer.
It use to not but now days yeah it totally freaks me out! I use to love reading SK but his books are always over 500..some times 1000 and so I don’t read him much any more…lol. A lot of it has to do with the fact that I am not a fast reader and so if it’s a book for review I do have the time strain and blogging I like to try and have enough reviews going that I don’t run out of them so if it takes me a week to read just one book I start freaking…lol. ๐ I like them under 400 but I still read some that are over that. ๐
I have a few book I wanted to read but over 500 pages just makes me think I can read 3 books in the time to read that one lol but I hate thinking like that. I also thought for now since I love my blog and I love doing this I will try to budget my time with reading and when I decided to retire from blogging I will get to those REALLY long reads ๐ I wont be in any rush to READ ALL BOOKS anymore Lol
I don’t freak out about long books, but I’m much more aware now of my limited time to read. Although as a SAHM I do have more time than someone who works 40 hrs+ a week. Plus, my kids are teens and don’t require a lot of supervising from me. I finally decided I needed to know how fast I read so that I can plan my days more efficiently, so I took a fairly short book and timed myself. I read about a page a minute. There are some books that require longer time to process and thus take me a bit longer, but a page a minute is a good stick to judge books by for me and has worked fairly well.
I work part time ish lol but my kids are still young so it’s hard to really get a good 2 or 3 hours a day to read. I am about a page a minute also or 60 pages in a hour. I think planning like that and know my speed will totally make it easier to get to those bigger reads and not feel so stressed out ๐
Thanks for stopping by!
I totally get your point, especially now that I don’t have as much time to read. Everything above 400 pages seems so long and then it usually takes me longer than a week to read and there are so many books I want to read and it feels like I am taking so long on only one book. I did start the year with a long book and while I was happy when I finally finished it I also found out it wasn’t as bad as I thought to read a long book, because it was a good book and it didn’t feel slow or anything. I am just more reluctant to pick up those long books.
I once calculated with my Kobo that I read about 60 pages in an hours, so a book of 300 pages would be finished in 5 days/ a week if I don’t get an hour reading time in each day. Nowadays I usually read about one book a week and I don’t like reading a book longer then that. Sometimes I miss those days before book bloggin, although I wouldn’t want to trade book blogging for anything, I did enjoy how I could read the Wheel of Time series back to back without wprrying about the lenght and those books where long.
Exactly, I also read about 60 pages in an hour and depending on my time it’s hard to get a good 2 or 3 hours of reading in a day. I also wouldn’t want to trade book blogging for anything I do enjoy it a LOT.
I would LOVE to read the Wheel of Time Series again but OMG they really are long.