It’s fine if you can’t finish a hundred books a year

During a month-long reading slump last year, I started watching BookTube videos and following every single big name bookstagrammer I could find. I thought that frequent exposure to book related content would eventually push me out of my reading slump.

Instead, I found myself feeling stressed every time someone posted their completed yearly reading challenge on Goodreads consisting of some hundred books, or when someone uploaded a reading vlog where they finish two books a day at one go.

It just felt as if I wasn't enough of a dedicated reader myself, despite trying to read as much as I could. Or because I wasn't always completing monthly reading goals, keeping track of the books I was going through, jumping on the hype train of every single hot release from fan-favourite authors like most people I followed in my small bubble were. It was actually my own mistake for not realising early on that reading is not a race.

The first thing that comes up after searching on YouTube for tips on how to be a better reader, is an array of videos with guidelines on how to read a hundred books a year, twenty books a month, and so on, almost as if being a proper bookworm has to be synonymous with being able to devour tons of books within a particular span of time.

More often than not, these ''guides"include booktubers droning on and on about how it's important to read whenever you have some free time, tracking what you read, building a routine for your reading hours, and even following a few specific authors whose books are supposedly life-changing, or a must read.

This ends up presenting recreational reading as more of a chore than a way to enjoy oneself, which, according to me, is more or less the main purpose.

After all, not everyone who reads for a few blissful hours for escapism or relaxation should be bound to treating reading as a task where they stress out about ticking this and that off on their Goodreads, digesting books that are not their tempo just because the whole book community is into it, or making a schedule out of reading.

Some people can't go a day without reading at least a bit and some dive into a nightlong book binge session after a month-long readers' block. A lot of us use reading as a coping mechanism, but just as many need to be at peace and have proper headspace to even focus on the words.   However, none of the latter ones make anyone any less of a bookworm. Types of readers come in as many varieties as Penguin's collector's editions, and it's more important to read at one's own pace and preference than anything else - especially when it comes to leisure reading.