We have friends who traveled in Great Britain and Europe last year carrying only backpacks weighing fifteen pounds. I need way more than that just for my books. Last week the book bag I took on retreat weighed 22 pounds. To be honest, I had a couple of small puzzles in there, some oversize playing cards, 2 DVDs and a few CDs, so not every ounce was reading material.Nonetheless, I got home today and pulled the reading I'd finished from my big black bag. That included some magazines I'll be blogging about here, a couple of books I'll also be blogging about here, and a book on Ethan Allen I blogged about at Goodreads. I also was distracted by the new purchase of a book of poetry by Billy Collins, meaning it hadn't been part of the original haul, which I also blogged about at Goodreads.
When I was done sorting read from unread, my bag and remaining reading, mostly magazines and books I've begun but not finished, came in at 4 pounds. I'm going to be generous and estimate that those DVDs, puzzles, etc., weighed five pounds. So let's say I read thirteen pounds last week.
I like that method of tracking reading. Seriously, when you're talking books, magazines, maybe some literary journals, pages won't be comparable. Weight may be the way to go.
Hmm. Should I try to keep track of the weight of my reading this year, the way some people keep track of their number of books?
I think it would be entertaining, Gail. Of course you'd need to do it for a couple of years to know if you were increasing or decreasing in your reading weight :-)
ReplyDeleteI realized today that keeping track of the weight of what I read would be a lot of work. Weighing individual books? Magazines? Just the articles within the magazines? But I'm planning another trip later this year and can do some before and after weighing then.
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