I love this! Everyone should keep a list like this (self-hosted). It also makes me a little bit sad, as there are SO MANY books and this shows that a lifetime of reading will only get you to maybe 2000 books.
Choose wisely what you read.
Choose wisely what you read.
We have 1000's of books in our house. We read a lot and I would have not imagined a second that my comment could be interpreted this way.
So, yes, drop the specific book and enjoy another one is my advice.
For most people, a book is probably a multi-week investment, though lighter fare can go quicker. You can also skim, or read segments only, or quit bad books quickly. I recommend each of these where appropriate.
There are roughly 300,000 "traditionally" published books printed each year in the United States (Bowker ISBN registrations), a million or three including self-published. The US Library of Congress has 40 million catalogued titles, and Google estimated about 140 million books published (through its Google Books project) as of 2015 or so. You will sample only a tiny portion of the world's literature.
The most-read books of all time are, in rough order: The Bible, the Quran, Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung, all reporting (with various degrees of precision and accuracy) ~0.5 -- 5 billion copies), then possibly Cervantes Don Quixote, and the Harry Potter series. Three of those, at least, are principally propaganda, in the original and/or modern senses.
A well-established historical novel may sell roughly 200 million or so copies, as with A Tale of Two Cities or The Little Prince.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_books>
The Facebook (and now TikTok) homepages and/or app screens now dwarf these.
Quantity ... has its benefits, but also disadvantages. "Of the reading of books there is no end" says The Preacher in Ecclesiastes.
I recommend reading well, I've suggested Great Books as at least a good starting library, though my other suggestion is to have a good guiding question and to follow that.
Keep in mind that following recent trends, news, gossip, etc., can engross all your time and attention with very little long-term staying value. I don't remain wholly ignorant of what's happening, but I try to dip very lightly from that pitcher.
From a recent comment of mine: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32669503>
Surely the Bible is among the most un-read books in history as well, with all of the copies sitting in hotel rooms and on family shelves unopened.
A book selling one copy which is never read would have a higher percentage-unread.
Otherwise, as total copies increase, the absolute magnitude of unread copies would likely increase proportionately.
Keep in mind that copies presented to multiple potential readers (as with, say, Gidion's Bible, typically found in hotel rooms) would likely have a greater chance of being opened at least once over its lifetime.
There's also the interesting question suggested: what book has the highest readers-per-copy ratio? And how should that be scaled by total readers? I'm inclined on general principle to suggest the ratio * log(n) where n is total copies produced. That penalises very low sales volumes, but discounts greater total print runs.
I'd suspect it would probably be a romance novel.
I get through about 15 books a month - 2000 would be like 10-12 years, not a lifetime.
So the parent commenter's generalization "at most 2000 books in a lifetime" is hardly accurate - and has been way bypassed by any bookworm I know.
Heck, one can read 2000 books before the time they have kids too. I had already read about that number by 20-25 starting from about 10-11 or so with sci-fi stuff like Verne and Asimov, and moving to literature and non-fiction soon.
I know because I need to pack them every time I move - it's the most labour intensive part of a move to take the library with us, in 100s of cardboard boxes, which then stay unopened for 3-6 months after moving to a new house.
This happens both when I'm listening to audiobooks and doing something else, or when just sitting and doing nothing when listening. I don't have the same problem with reading, I can do that with high focus for hours without any problem.
I think the key here is to listen while doing something undistracting and boring -- so not like driving (which requires your attention often), but rather e.g. on the treadmill or commuting in some longer distance, where you can passively zone one (eg. long train commute, not 3 subway stops).
Some things are just comfortable and fun to revisit.
Some things are even both.
I don't consume a lot of media for the same reason of wasting my time, plus trial and error of finding satisfying material takes additional quantity of time I don't have. With that I justify occasional media reconsumption as I can get equally satisfying emotional response from rewatched material.
Also, why would death play any role on how many different material one needs to consume?
As for death, you can't consume any more material after death.