how many books do you think an average person reads in a lifetime?

i was thinking about this last night; it's really hard to tell. i figured that if i read about 55 books a year, i've reads 750 books in my whole life. but then again, i wasn't born knowing how to read and most of the books for those first few years were picture books. and i definitely read more than the average person.

does anyone know the real number?

55 in a year is way to many books for my liking, ill do one every couple of months unless its really good but even then your talking like 3-4 weeks.

i figured at first that it usually takes me about a week and a half to read a book, which would mean that i read only 35 books a year. but that doesn't take into account that i sometimes read up to 5 books at once, and the books i have to read for school. and i can NEVER have too many books for my liking : )

I read at the very least a book a week. Usually more.

Originally posted by sputnik
most of the books for those first few years were picture books.
Picture books are books too ! And some of them are great. If i count the picture books i read my 3 years old daughter, I easily read 20 books a week (OK - sometimes I read 20 times the same picture book !)

Originally posted by astrapol2
Picture books are books too ! And some of them are great. If i count the picture books i read my 3 years old daughter, I easily read 20 books a week (OK - sometimes I read 20 times the same picture book !)

Dr. Seuss most definitely. totally awesome. and goodnight moon, another great literary masterpiece.

"All the wild things" is great too.

Would it make any sense to say that if a person can breeze right through a book -- that person should find books with deeper, tougher, more foreign, whatever material that at least challenges the readers mind and thought process?

Nah -- probably not -- forget it.

Dop

Sure. But it depends what you expect from a book. Most people use them as a recreational media (and sure I'm not an exception to this 90% of the time).
The same could be asked with movies BTW.

Originally posted by sputnik
how many books do you think an average person reads in a lifetime?



That depends on how many pictures are in them :D

I read a book a week at least, and sometimes 2,3 books at once, well at least for the last 4,5 years anyway, and I work at the library, so thats not much. So for a lifetime, I could've read about 700+ books, if you include those Encyclopedia Brown books, those Cam Jansens, and all those another small chapter books.
Average person in a life time- about 450-600+ books.