Hello!

If you’re a follower of bookish people online, especially the content creators who’s full time job is to create bookish content, it can feel very much like they spend all day every day reading and makes you wonder how you could possibly fit more reading into your average day between your actual full time job, maybe having a social life, optimistically doing some exercise and hopefully being able to buy some groceries at some point!

So I thought this week instead of telling you how much I read in a week in pages and audiobook minutes, I thought I’d tell you in time (and how many pages/minutes I fit into that time!). I consider myself a very average reader – whilst I have the perks of being freelance, I do manage to fill my days and I don’t feel like I actually read outside (what I would call) the ‘normal’ times anyway – I predominantly read my physical books before bed and I listen to audiobooks when I’m driving. Sometimes at the weekend I’ll put on an audiobook and do a craft activity or if there’s a book I really can’t resist I’ll read while I eat breakfast or lunch, but not very often.

This week has been a pretty average week for me so here is a breakdown, day by day, of how much time I spend reading in a week!

Monday

We have a little bit of both ear-reading and eye-reading today – I had a dance class to attend as part of my training to be a teacher myself and the studio is approximately a 25 minute drive away from my house, so I spent just short of 1 hour starting a new audiobook, The Book of Two Ways by Jodi Picoult and listened to 58 minutes of the audiobook, which equates to 28 pages.

(I’m tracking it on Storygraph in pages because I only have six hours of listening time left in my Spotify allowance of this 15 hour audiobook, so it’s going to transition from an ear-read to an eye-read at some point next week. I’m over explaining, sorry!)

Then when I got to bed that night, I fully intended to read a little bit of A Sense of Freedom by Jimmy Boyle, but it was gone midnight by the time I actually settled down to read so that meant that Ali Hazelwood’s new release Not In Love was officially available to download on my kindle… so I read the first 29 pages of that which took me about 30 minutes. I was so sleepy I ended up having to put it down mid chapter which is something I hate doing but I was literally falling asleep.

So in total on Monday, I spent about 1.5 hours reading and managed to read a total of 57 pages of two books.

Tuesday

Now that it was officially release day for Not In Love, I was determined to make a bit more of a dent in it than I had the previous night! I read for maybe 40 minutes (I definitely wasn’t paying attention to the time) and read 41 pages to reach the 18% mark… I then fell asleep on the sofa for another 2 and a half hours because something in my brain clearly needed more sleep. Not the ideal way I wanted to start the day, but how I started the day none the less!

Then I didn’t read anything else until I went to bed that night, where I read for maybe 45 minutes (sorry I didn’t start tracking properly until I remembered I was doing this post halfway through the week!) and read 36 pages and, again, had to stop mid chapter because I was literally falling asleep.

So my Tuesday total was approximately 1 hour 25 minutes and 77 pages of Not In Love.

Wednesday

I was determined to get through my mammoth to do list today that had built up from earlier in the week, so the first opportunity I got for reading was when I was driving back to the dance studio for my ballet class, giving me a total audiobook listening time of just short of 1 hour in which I listened to 55 minutes of The Book of Two Ways by Jodi Picoult (which equates to 24 pages).

Then upon falling into bed that night, I managed to read for about 25 minutes before falling asleep, which meant I read a further 16 pages of Not In Love by Ali Hazelwood.

Which brings our Wednesday total to 1 hour 25 minutes and 40 pages of two books.

Thursday

On this day, nothing quite went to plan – I was meant to have therapy but wires got crossed so I didn’t have that appointment, I woke up feeling groggy, it was not the vibe. But I had another drive to a dance class which was about an hour and listened to 68 minutes of The Book of Two Ways, which is 31 pages.

Then when I got to bed, I managed 25 pages of Not In Love, which I think was about a chapter and a half and took me 25 minutes, which seems to be my reading in bed average! Granted, if I could tear myself away from TikTok a bit sooner I’d probably be able to stay awake for longer but that’s neither here nor there.

So for a total reading time of 1 hour 25 minutes, I managed a total of 56 pages.

Friday

No driving today so I didn’t listen to anymore of The Book of Two Ways, but I did spend about an hour reading Not In Love before I fell asleep and I read 45 pages in about one hour.

Saturday

One last drive to the studio and I listened to 56 minutes of The Book of Two Ways (25 pages) and I believe it was Saturday night where I started my current run of bad night’s sleep which meant I didn’t get to sleep till 2am, but it did mean I read 56 pages of Not In Love in about 1 hour 20 minutes.

So for a big reading day of nearly 2.5 hours I managed a total of 81 pages which I’m actually pretty pleased with!

Sunday

For the last day of the week, I wasn’t expecting to read a lot because I was absolutely knackered by the time I got to bed, but I don’t know if it’s insomnia or my brain just trying to make my life harder, but I was up till 2am again so I managed to read 77 pages of Not In Love and I got so close to the end! I only had 60 pages left but I’m enjoying the book so much that I know I want to enjoy it properly when I’m actually awake. I didn’t track the time properly, but I reckon it was about an hour and a half of reading time.

That’s all the data for a week! It’s not particularly accurate and not being able to sleep till 2am has definitely had an impact on how much reading I’ve got in this week.

Calling it data makes it sound more academic and scientific in my mind and that tickles something in my brain, I’m not trying to be pretentious I promise 😂

So in total I spent about 10 hour 35 minutes reading, which on the one hand sounds like a long time, but then realistically, if the ‘standard person’ (if that exists) sits down at 7pm of an evening and watches TV till 10pm just during the week days, that’s 15 hours of a week gone. The TV comparison is always the one that gets people! Audiobooks are definitely the bulk of my reading, but where I don’t have the speed increased that much, I don’t get through as much in terms of pages as I would if I were just reading the book but I am adding reading into a time where I otherwise wouldn’t have been able to!

That’s a little insight into how much I read in a week! I consider myself on the slower side as reading paces go – I was always the slow reader at school and I think that’s stuck with me, but then as someone who engages with a lot of bookish content online, my comparison is people who read somewhere between 100-300 books a year, so my goal of 52 is not a lot in comparison!

But it’s not about comparisons – reading is something I do for fun! But I also find statistics and data tracking fun, so the numbers and what that says about my ‘speed’ doesn’t actually make me feel any pressure to read more or faster at all, which is a decent balance I think!

Thank you so much for taking time out of your book,

Sophie xx