500 Billion Pages

We're all familiar with the summer reading programs for young readers (see my earlier post HERE). But today I'm here with a fun reading challenge for adults. Relax! There's no jumping through hoops to read in specific categories or genres. Just read. Novels. Comic books. How-to Build a Backyard Gazebo. Whatever makes you happy.

But ThriftBooks wants you to join their 500 Billion Pages Challenge. It seems that surveys show that a decade ago Americans were reading 500 billion pages a year. And now we're down to the dismal 300 billion pages. So ThriftBooks wants you to help boost our overall pages.

Before you worry that you don't have the time let's crunch the numbers. SIGH. Math. There are 195 days until the end of the year - and the end of the challenge. Even if you just read ONE book between now and December that would boost the count anywhere from 40(if you're enjoying a picture book with a young reader) to 1200 pages (if you're tackling Ron Chernow's new Mark Twain biography). But let's call the average book 300 pages. If you read only TWO pages a day (assuming you'll miss a few days) you'll knock that book out by the end of the year. Let's go crazy and say you read one average length book a month between now and New Year's. That could be around 2,000 pages.

Why not do it? Get your pages in! Sign up HERE.