Bookish Musings - Reading 'Too Many' Books

Bookish Musings is a feature here at Beautiful Bookish Butterflies that allows one of us to share our thoughts and opinions, talk and discuss things happening in the book and blogging community or share a personal book related issue we have. Today, Amanda is talking about whether there is such a thing as reading 'too many' books. Can you burn yourself out? Is is possible? Surely not..

At this point, I've probably rewritten this post about three times, but the entire essence of this post is to talk about at which point reading a lot of books becomes reading too many books. In the last three and half months, I've read over the amount of books I read through the entirety of last year; granted, I took a 3-4 month gap last year, but still, I'm 3.5 months into 2014 and I've read more than last year. Because of this statistic, it's made me want to look at the amount of books I've read, how that amount has affected my ratings and in turn, affected how I read and blog on Book Badger.

• In January, I read 12 books.
• In Febuary, I read 15 books, 3 novellas and 2 extra material pieces.
• In March, I read 11 books, 2 graphic novels and 1 novella.
• So far in April, I've read and finished 12 books and 3 graphic novels.
• (I'm part way through another two and debating dnf'ing another)

As you can see, my reading habits have fluctuated throughout these last few months, yet it's always stayed above 10 books; on the one hand this is fantastic, it means I'm smashing challenges and reading records, I'm able to plan posts well in advance and it means that I'm seriously enjoying them, but on the other hand, it means that making my way through an average of at least 2.5 'books' a week, which is still good, but misrepresentativ of the actual books I'm reading. I know I vary on the amount of books I read each week, some weeks I'll read around 3, others 5 and others 1 if I'm very lucky, and it's these new statistics I'm creating by reading so much that is making me extremely nervous about not reading.

I took the time in March to read a little less and do other things I enjoy instead, such as gaming, watching television and I redesigned the blog and all those things took up time I could have spent reading; in fact, in the last week of March, I only read over 3 nights, when I usually I would have read double that, and this affected how many books I read that week, and in turn, that month. It made me so nervous to think I was reading less that panic settled in and made me feel even worse about myself, like I was letting myself, publishers, authors and you, the viewers, down, when in fact, I'd already read 10 books that month. It was ridiculous and I finally realised I was putting too much pressure on myself to read books.


It was also at this point that I realised I was getting really picky with my ratings. As of this moment, every month, I've had one or two 5 star ratings, which is great obviously, it's always good to have read perfect books, and on average, around four or five 4.5 and 4 star ratings, but this means that around 50% of the books I'm reading every month are 3.5 stars or less and that's a really big surprise for me. I can't help but sometimes wonder whether 50% of my month has been wasted on books that just didn't cut mustard or whether it was well used time. I've also looked back at my ratings on books I read last year and, because I've read so many more books and gained more experience, I'm giving lower ratings on books I probably would have rated higher in the past. Is this fair? Is this right? God knows.


Every month I keep telling myself I should chill out and take a break from reading as much, and every month I fall under the impression that I've done just that, yet when I look back I realise I haven't, and April has become another of those months, and I think that's down the amount of ARC's I keep requesting, so I've decided that in May, I'm going to read more of my physical copies, because the pressure I'm putting on myself, the anxiety and nervous state I'm putting myself in over publishers and authors and the constant need to increase my challenges is getting out of hand.

What's your relationship with reading been like so far this year? Have you been reading a steady amount, too little or too much? How many books have you read this year, and do you feel the same on any the points I've mentioned? Also, I'm having a kind of a trial for gifs lately, do you like the new editions or should I ditch them, what do you think?