Now I know that is a weird thought to have first thing in the morning. But it isn't unusual for me to think about my reading goals in terms of pages and percentages. I do it all the time. I always check how many pages a book has and then carve it up into sections before I start reading. When I get to one of these milestones I get the satisfaction of saying to myself, "Ah, you have just completed 10% (or whatever percentage) of the book. Way to go!"
Quirky.
I have been counting out pages of my books for years but not until this week did I take a moment to stop and ask myself why do I do this.
After a little contemplation, it came to me in a flash. It all started with one book, a long book, the longest I had ever read up to that time. The book was "...And the Ladies of the Club" by Helen Hooven Santmyer. My mom loaned it to me and asked me to read it. I gaped at its length, 1,176 pages. I thought I would never finish it. But as I read I found myself doing mental math, congratulating myself every 110 pages because I had just finished another 10% of the book. Breaking it down that way made the book much less daunting. And the satisfaction of completing such a long book was tremendous.
On a funny note. I couldn't remember the title of this book, that one that started this quirky habit of mine. I searched the Internet for books of 1000 pages with women in the title. Someone had created a list on Goodreads of long books. There it was. Amazing.I read "...And the Ladies of the Club" almost thirty years ago. I've been carving up my books into manageable page counts ever since. Quirky. I get it. But it works for me. And, by the way, this morning I did read 60+ pages of my current book so I would reach that 1/3rd mark before I stopped to write this blog post!
What about you? How do you cope with long books? What quirky reading habits do you have?
