How Many Books Can You Read in a Lifetime? Choose Carefully—and Read Beyond Business

How many books can you read in your lifetime? Sometimes we overestimate ourselves. If someone starts reading at 10 and continues until 80, does nothing else every day, and has the extraordinary persistence to read five books every single day, the number of books they could read in a lifetime would be 127,000. The reality in Taiwan is that most people, once they enter the workforce, rarely manage to finish even one book a month. Suppose they read ten books a year, from age 20 to 70: that would mean around 500 books over their post-graduation lifetime. Someone especially committed might reach 1,000. In practice, then, a person cannot read all that many books, so it is worth choosing carefully. And do not read only popular business and management books. If possible, read more literature, history, philosophy, geography, popular science, medicine, and so on. Try to broaden your horizons and perspective. ----- A colleague’s view A lopsided reading diet makes it harder for Taiwan to become a cultural and branding powerhouse. We mostly read popular business and management books, motivational books, celebrity biographies, and the like, but rarely read widely. People want books that help with work or their careers; they read with a utilitarian expectation of short-term results. My colleague feels that this reading culture and atmosphere are unlikely to produce deep cultural grounding. Everyone reads what seems most useful in the short term, but not books read for pleasure or on miscellaneous subjects. Actually, being willing to read at all is already a good thing. I feel that most people in Taiwan, myself included, have lost the ability to concentrate and read for long stretches.