This is Silly. Book Goals Are Not Personal
Good afterevenmorn, Readers!
How was your winter holidays? I hope you found it gentle and restful and full of the things that make you happy. I spent some time with family, which is always lovely, and more time by myself recovering (the joys of being a massive introvert). It seems that the end of the year was more fraught for others than myself, though.
I’m speaking of the BookTok community. There have been a few ruffled feathers with folks getting angry at other folks for the massive number of books they may (or may not, as one of the accusations proclaim) have read.
If that sounds silly to you, you are not alone. I’ve been watching from the sidelines giggling or rolling my eyes, depending. Let’s get into this nonsense… because sometimes watching train wrecks in slow motion is mildly amusing. And so I am here after another adventure into social media to report on what’s going on over there.
Alright, TikTok is still new to me, despite being on it a couple of years now. I find the whole thing fascinating, but also not really something I want to participate in too much. I am an old, after all. I will not be dancing. BookTok is a very special beast. For independent authors, there is perhaps no vehicle greater than BookTok for catapulting your books into the general zeitgeist, if you are lucky enough to be noticed by the right people at the right time.
It can also be incredibly messy, silly and petty for no good reason.
This is one of those times.
I have to warn you, it’s very, very silly. And even pettier.
As an aside, there are some very good, serious discussions to be had on BookTok. There are some really good videos on cultural appropriation, or what makes a good story, or good writing. There are some vast number of different takes are really interesting to deep dive into, if you have the ability to let yourself get frustrated or angry on occasion. What I’m about to discuss is not one of these great conversations or exploration.
What I’m talking about is the fact that some readers on TikTok are accusing other readers on TikTok for artificially inflating their final “books read in 2025” number.
Yep. That’s it. That’s the controversy.
There are many explanations given behind these accusations. Some claim that the numbers reached are absolutely impossible (in excess of 180 books, in one case), unless one is unemployed, so therefore everyone who reaches these extremely high numbers must be lying. Others are trying to police what is considered “reading.”
I’ll address these things first, since they’re super simple. For the first point, some BookTok people are earning their full time incomes from TikTok. There is this thing called the Creator Fund, which pays people to post on TikTok in a similar manner to YouTube. It’s not available to us poor folks in Canada, but it is for people south of us. And some folks make a lot of great money doing it. So, no, these folks are not unemployed, per se. But they certainly do have more time than us suckers working the 9-5 to read. Reading is their job. So no, that number is not out of reach. It’s not necessarily out of reach for folks who do work another job full time. It all depends on how fast one reads (plenty of folks read really fast), and perhaps more importantly, how much time one carves out for reading. People who make a point to schedule reading time, and limit their time online can actually create a great deal of time for reading.
While I could not reach over a hundred books a year… I’m lucky if I can make five, if I’m honest (though I am determined to carve more time this year). I have a lot going on, alright. Don’t judge. It’s okay. You can judge. I’m not that sensitive. I did rather let the ball drop in 2025. I’m getting off the point.
The point is that it’s about priorities.
As to the second point, all I’m going to say is that audiobooks count as reading, even if it’s technically listening. That’s the end of that argument.
The real friction behind this latest spat is a little deeper than accusations of cheating. There are plenty of videos of people being quite petty; videos that simply state that no one cares about these enormous end of year book counts, so people should probably just shut up about it.
Listen, I am no psychiatrist. Or psychologist. But clearly these complainers do care; they care enough to make an entire video telling high achievers to shut up about their achievements. Why? I really don’t know. Well, as a former high achiever (heavy emphasis on the former) who lost friends to a competition I had no idea was happening, I have some idea.
I can only guess as to why these people who care enough to make whole videos claiming no one cares about other people’s book counts are so angry or hurt about other people’s achievements. If the reactions intending to drag down the achievements of others is genuine, then it’s time for some therapy, perhaps.
I just want to offer all these people a gentle reminder that they’re not being judged by anyone for not reaching the impossible numbers of other people. Those folks with those seriously high book counts aren’t looking at those of us who struggled to get any reading done this past year in any kind of way. If they’re anything like I am, they’re simply thrilled that other people are reading at all. They’re aware that they are the outliers. Mostly, they just want to enthuse with people about the books and stories they loved (and perhaps gossip about the ones they didn’t). There’s no reason to turn this into a spat. Literally no reason.
Well, there is one reason. Content. Everything on social media seems to run on rage and knee-jerk reactions. Which is why I’ve had a lot of trouble gaining traction on there, I suppose. I don’t have the energy for it. Still, if making contents get you money, then posting rage bait seems the obvious move.
And hey, it gave me a topic for this week’s post, so… maybe keep fighting over this silliness. Maybe I could also milk it more.
Content, baby!
Alright, I’m done. This BookTok spat is silly, and is interrupting what makes BookTok special — a place where book enthusiasts get to unabashedly express their love for books in general and individual stories specifically. Let’s keep BookTok that way, please. It’s nice.
When S.M. Carrière isn’t brutally killing your favorite characters, she spends her time teaching martial arts, live streaming video games, and sometimes painting. In other words, she spends her time teaching others to kill, streaming her digital kills… and sometimes relaxing. Her most recent titles include Daughters of Britain, Skylark and Human. Her next novel The Lioness of Shara Mountain releases early 2027.
While I agree entirely that this whole spat is amazingly silly, I am amazed at the suggestion that it is impossible for anybody who is employed to read 180 books in a year.
Back in the mid-to-late 1970s I had a lengthy commute to work and spent at least 2 hours per (working day) in a train, all of which I spent reading and, on average, would read a complete book in that period. Purely on that basis, 5 days a week for 50 weeks in the year, I would have read 250 books while holding down a full-time job. As I spent much of my leisure time in the evenings and at weekends also reading, the total number for the year was probably closer to 400 (or even 500).
Of course, in the 1970s, books were typically 150 to 200 pages long rather than the doorstops that are more common these days, but even today I find it only takes 3 hours or so to read a complete book, so a book a day would be more than feasible if I put my mind to it.
RIGHT?! The whole thing is mind-bogglingly silly.
And you’re right! It isn’t so hard to read many, many books a year. I will never approach 250, but I did read more than a hundred once. No one believed me.
Yes! Commuting time is a spectacularly useful source of time for reading! People I see in the trains these days often use it for doom-scrolling or videos, and don’t seem to see it as readable time. Doubly productive if listening to an audiobook as well as sketching, weaving, or taking photographs. 180 is a very reachable number, with a commute.
Very good point about the lengths of books having a large impact on numbers, too. It reminds me that in the ’80s and ’90s, my folks both must have averaged at least 365 books read per year, before their Heyer, Clancy, and Cussler reading, because each growing pre-K kid got a book a day read to them by each parent. Picture books are still books.
The whole thing is very silly.
Yes, back in the day, I’d get up in the morning, read the newspaper (remember those?), then read my book on the bus on the way to work, read over my lunch break, read on the bus on the way home from work, then spend the evening sitting in my recliner reading, ideally with my cat in my lap. I got through a LOT of books in those days.
And then along came these things called the Internet and Netflix and a gaming computer and, well, my numbers these days are lower but still very respectable, if I do say so myself.
Apparently, it’s possible to tilt one’s head in such a way as to suddenly lose balance, even while seated. Weird. Even weirder that reading numbers have become a point of contention. Have any of the accused happened to have and be able to point to their Storygraph charts?
Perhaps part of it is that many people don’t *realize* how much time they spend on other pursuits, such as doom-scrolling, Discording, and TV-watching. If I’m over at someone else’s house and that person wants to watch TV, I generally end up going home later wondering how we had an unplanned multi-hour binge session, and nobody else noticed. But to those friends, it’s normal. They’re also the ones who ask me how I’m always reading a new book, or how they can ask how a particular series is proceeding and discover I’m three books further along than last week. You’re right, time allocation is a key, but awareness of the amount of time in a day spent on particular recreations may also be a key.
You’re also right, people with an impossible total (yay for learning a new label that applies to me…? 🤨) aren’t thinking anything in particular about anybody else. I might care if another reader challenges me to a reading race, but those are no fun for anyone. Besides, anyone can beat my impossible total easily: read a bunch of mangas, poetry chapbooks, or picture books, and you’ll outpace me fast– they all count as books.
Can we get BookTok raging about something more reasonable? Perhaps the high costs and low success numbers of getting novels printed in Braille? C’mon, we’ve got 3D-printers that can deposit dots on paper, now, so we can reduce the amount of pages it takes to half-size by not using the punch method. But still, people with low visual acuity are forced to resort to audiobooks almost exclusively! Talk about an under-served readership!
All excellent points.
And I do wish BookTok would rage about something more reasonable. But alas. Here we are. Still… *grabs popcorn*
*Offers Raisenettes and Malteasers, too.*
The ghost of Harriet Klausner must be hovering over these TikTok combatants.
A friend once sat next to Stephen King at a Red Sox game and between innings King pulled out a book and read. I read in a later interview that King reads every available second, in bank lines etc… People like that who are focused on reading consume a massive number of books. Seems to me that is at once extreme, I like to read but also love a number of activities which cut into my reading. That said who cares how many books you read, everyones situation is different.
Exactly. Who cares?
As a voracious reader (and yes, audiobooks do count), I find the whole ‘reading goal’ thing, silly. Read what you want, and as much as you want. Track titles if you want. But an actual book count goal? Whatever.
I’m finding social media is more and more contrarian about reading.
Lately, people complaining that Kindle Unlimited limits you to 20 books at a time, is proliferating. “That’s not unlimited.”
Like you’re actively reading 20 books, at once, and that’s not enough? People will find anything to complain about.
…almost fell out of my chair, again. People are complaining about the limit on Unlimited? If one has a large number of kids, and sharing the Kindle account across devices is how one monitors and curates the children’s reading, I can see 20 possibly being low, but still. It’s not like bricks-and-mortar librarians are going to let a patron check out the entire library and cart it away. Libraries and Unlimited are about access, not about possession. How are people complaining about this?
Not wanting to assign any blame here, but my local public libraries all like to sponsor reading contests for children over the Summer break from school, and those programs tend to track and reward participants for the number of books read. So the idea of reading as a competitive sport is being introduced to early readers, which makes it less surprising that they grow up still fixating on the idea.
My school did this. I hadn’t put much thought into it, but you are probably right about folks carrying the competition into adulthood… which is still very silly.
Good point. But the early introduction always results in the vast majority of us discovering that reading contests are not fun. Just like the whole “chairs” thing in music, you don’t get to enjoy the books/music much and it generates bad feelings between participants. I don’t know *anyone* who really enjoys reading who didn’t revolt against and reject the idea entirely after elementary school, and those are the sorts I’d expect to see on BookTok.
This whole thing is really strange.
There is no better reason to read than to be rewarded with a Pizza Hut Personal Pan Pizza.
I just posted my number (not on Tik Tok (I’ll never be on that) but on my blog) — 91 books. That doesn’t count magazines or stories. It does count some very short books but also some VERY long books (like six novels by Trollope, four of which were very long.) The total was 91. I used to get over 100 all the time but usually not reading the really long books. And I do listen to audibooks and of course they count! Back in my Locus days I would read up to 2500 stories per year, plus some novels (not as many as I read now though.) Over 180 is quite plausible!
I started tracking my reading a couple years ago when a friend told me he was trying to average a book a week. Tracking the books I complete (there are several I set down mid stream) serves two purposes. It keeps me from re-reading books or stories a second time (I read a lot of author anthologies and “best of” books) and it continues to fuel my love of sci fi of yesteryear with an average book length of 180 p. This year’s total was 35 which is about average for me (a slow reader with lots of other chores/hobbies).
That’s nothing to be sniffed at!
I don’t care for social media and my impression of BookTok, based on those I’ve talked to who are on it, is that it is ripe with the usual petty, gossipy nonsense. I know there are mature people on it offering thoughtful commentaries on books but I can’t justify seeking them out when I already have trusted websites with professional writers fulfilling that need.
I’m especially bothered by the fact that many of the prominent posters are nothing more than paid shills indistinguishable from any other influencer who do nothing more than review all of the free crap sellers throw at them with the more successful ones being paid good money for their services. From what I’ve read an increasing number of these people plug books with at best a cursory glance and I’ve noticed a discouraging uptick on sites like Good Reads of people using the review spaces just to beg publishers for their own advance copies. I think a lot of the “heavy readers” on BookTok do so mainly to keep the ARC pipeline flowing.
I don’t doubt that there are individuals who read voraciously with a critical eye but I confess I’m skeptical of their ability to offer anything more than a clever soundbite’s worth of an opinion. I’m far more inclined to value the opinions of those who manage at best a dozen or do novels a year because they’ve also allocated big swaths of their schedule to gardening, cooking, painting, long daily walks and anything else that promotes a more well-rounded life coupled with a fair amount of skepticism about consumerism, especially the book business.
That said, while I personally wouldn’t be interested in the opinions of these book vacuumers I also don’t see the point in challenging their integrity. Why go there? More importantly, I just couldn’t care less.
I’m glad you at least enjoy the show.
As for myself, I do use Goodreads to track what I’ve read, and I do generally set a goal of 52 books/year, which I end up blowing past, but it’s just something I do to incentivize myself.
Completely reasonable.
Reading a book to be entertained, enlightened, or challenged is completely different than “getting through” a book in order to pad a “stat” that nobody in their right mind gives a damn about anyway. I keep track of what I read, but it’s for my information only, and I do it with (are you sitting down?) a pencil and paper. I try to focus on quality rather than quantity of reading, and if I want to talk about something I’ve read, I have a few reliable people in my actual life who aren’t idiots. (I just read my first Willa Cather novel at the urging of one of them, and I will be eternally grateful.) As for the usual social media suspects, Alan Jacobs said it all:
“Let this give you hope in the New Year: No matter how powerful AI becomes, it will never quench the primal human desire to tell total strangers on the internet that they’re stupid and wicked.”
Hah! That’s great.
My thanks for an interesting essay and discussion on a silly subject.
I am a rather fast reader, who also is focused and made the time to read even before I retired.
At the same time, as a data driven engineer who loves numbers, I have to admit I use my Book Database to track this very question.
You can argue that I’m wrong, but I count books in my Database that I started but did not finish as “Read”. There aren’t usually that many of them.
At the most, I had 142 books read one year.
I did have a goal in retirement to read a book a day. I know I could do this, but I don’t think I would like the person I would become. Also, luckily for me, it’s not a job!
I think I could easily read 200 books a year, but I would not enjoy it. My goal is reading interesting, fun fiction that I enjoy and that I enjoy writing about. I let the currents take me where they take me.
At the least, I had 30. The 30 was definitely influenced by switching over to reading a lot more short fiction a few years ago, although 2025 was back up to 87.
I realize that these numbers are an artifact of a lot of things, but that none of it makes me a good person.
I thank my non-existent God that I don’t have to worry about BookTok ragebaiting.
Reading books you enjoy for however many books that is *should* be the goal of everyone, in my opinion.
If you have reading goals for the year, it might be worth asking at the end of the year how many of those books you can actually remember anything about beyond the barest plot summary. Did any of the characters really stand out to you, or can you not even recall their names when you look back? Did the denouement include some character’s epiphany that you now can’t even describe without it sounding banal? Were 90% of the novels (or more) from the same genre and maybe even the same subgenre, all blurring together? If something about a story struck you as very original when you read it, can you summarize now what that was and why it impressed you so? How many stories in the short story collections you read have now flown completely out of your memory? For myself, more than the declining number of books I read, it’s a little discouraging how little of what I read leaves a lasting impression. Although maybe being old as dirt has something to do with that.
To be fair, there can be good stories that just don’t resonate, and so though they were enjoyable while they lasted, they’re not going to stick. That doesn’t mean either you or they are bad. And then there are some stories that just sit with you forever, and those are rare and precious and worth reading even the bad fluff to find.
True. And sometimes resting in a certain genre for a time is because one is chasing a particular delicious element that is only appearing fleetingly. The books don’t necessarily blur together, it’s more an exercise in appreciating how different authors handle the same concept. (Sapient buildings were really big in fantasy about five years ago, for instance.)
Still, for memorable books that track outside general reading, it’s great to raid an independent book fair. The Fredericksburg Independent Book Fair is happening on October 3rd, this year, and I intend another raid.