What happened when I (tried to) read 300 books in 300 days

An article was doing the rounds on social media earlier this year, called "What happened when I (tried to) read 30 books in 30 days". I'd already done that, so I thought I'd have a go at reading 300 in 300 days.

I did pretty well: I read (or listened to) 300 books in 292 days. But I did make it easy for myself – whereas the writer of the 30 books article tried to read improving books that she didn't really enjoy, and so she ran out of steam, I deliberately focused on short books, graphic novels and short audiobooks that I really wanted to read.

You can tell how short the books I read this year were, because in 2016 I reached 300 books after 51,355 pages (and twelve months), but it only took 43,040 pages this year.

Some of the people responding to the 30 books in 30 days article thought it was impossible to do even that, or only possible if you only read bad books, but short or quick to read doesn't equal bad: I gave 25 books five stars on Goodreads this year, twice as many as the most I've ever given before.

One of those was to Chicken Licken by Vera Southgate. I thought it would be nice for my 4000th book read, more or less, to go back to the first fiction author I read on my own, and she didn't disappoint. I also gave five stars to all four omnibus volumes of BPRD: Plague of Frogs and to lots of Usagi Yojimbo collections, and of course to Down the Badger Hole by my inspiration R. Lionel Fanthorpe.

I did take quite a liberal view of what counted as a book for this, but, so far as anyone would care enough to quibble, I spend about half my working day proofreading, so even if all the Doctor Who audios were discounted I reckon I've still read over 300 books.

I should say that the books at the bottom of the picture are unrated, not zero rated. They're either books I've read for review, where the review hasn't been published yet, or books I read in the course of judging the BFA best novella award, which hasn't been announced yet.