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So I discussed this a little in my own WW post, but I think part of the problem you're running into is that "Reading X Number of Books" is a bad metric for comparing across people. It's good for a personal goal with yourself as long as you don't Goodhart yourself, but comparing across people gets to be confusing and useless very quickly. Every part of that goal can be Goodhart'd:
"Reading X Number of Books" : Some books I skim, some books I read every word. Some books if I don't understand something, I stop and re-read it or even look up what it means, some I skate on by and hope that either I'll figure it out from context later. Some books, like Plato or Dante or Joyce, I've read along with a college lecture course, section by section, deep reading passages throughout. Some I've motored through in a day. Some books I've read hundreds of pages but never finished.
"Reading X Number of Books" : I read War and Peace last year, that's five 300 page books by page count. I read Ulysses a couple years back, that's ten scifi pulp novels by difficulty. And even if you go by page count, you can Goodhart typesetting: I've read several books (notably Springora's Consent and Yellowface) which made typesetting decisions for margins and placement of blank pages that extended what would have obviously been Novellas or pamphlets into properly sized books.
"Reading X Number of Books" : What is a book? Is a collection of essays a book? Then what makes reading a collection of essays reading a book and reading Substack every day or the Sunday Times every week for a month not a book? What about something like Karina Longworth's book, Seduction, which 90% feels like a script for one of her podcast series? Is Don Quixote one book or two? Is the Bible one book or 73?
And I'm not accusing anyone of anything, rather these measurements are all personal, I doubt any two of us would have exactly the same answers to each one of them. So a lot of this, beyond timing, is me imagining you reading more books the way I read more books.
I do find reading physical books to be valuable, in a way that reading newspapers and magazines isn't, in a way that audiobooks aren't, in a way that Substack isn't. I make time for it, almost every day, in my life. But all things in moderation. I don't think I'd be three times better if I read three times as many books. And if I had an extra hour, I'd get as much or more out of an extra hour with family, an extra hour walking my dog another three miles, an extra hour working out, etc.
Thanks for the detailed comment. It is very easy to Goodhart yourself. For the first week of 2025, I had my goodreads goal set to 100 books. I quickly noticed how this was influencing my reading decisions. I was going for shorter books, and planning my reading in a way that didn't leave much room for what whim or interest. I quickly decided to change this back to the usual 52.
I like to think of reading as an alternative to scrolling and as a workout for my mind. In the same way that it's probably good to do some kind of cardio three times a week, I think it's good to sit for ~1-2 hours at least a couple times a week and read (I like to do every day). More reading than that is either for an assignment (these days philosophy book club or Spanish), or as an alternative to scrolling (although I am realizing that there are numerous house and life chores that probably should take precedence over that). This year I would like to dedicate one complete evening or afternoon to reading a week to see if it helps me focus or get into a book more (3-4 hours) but otherwise keep my amount of overall reading unchanged. Like you say, all things in moderation, and too much reading means neglect of other duties.
I'm of the mind there are minimums that I try to meet and I think are objectively good for a human. But at some point comparison becomes iffy, it's not linear.
I think strength is good. The master physical trait. A man who can bench his bodyweight is better than a man who can't. I'm less sure a man who can bench 3 plates is always better than a man who can bench his bodyweight.
I think reading is good. I think someone who reads ten books a year is just objectively better than someone who reads zero books a year. But I'm not sure somebody who reads fifty books a year is better than someone who reads ten.
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