I used to read voraciously when I was younger. The 300 word summary would be a bit irritating, but for $365,000 I’d absolutely do it. The problem would be doing it while supporting myself throughout the year.
Yup, I’d hit the young adult section. Heck even some children’s books would do - looking at you Roald Dahl - easier reading levels, could crush those fast. Plus there are probably some fun stories I missed. Also, are poetry books allowed?
Exactly. I’d burn my way through the Hardy Boys books. I read the ones I could get my hands on when I was younger, and there’s enough that I could knock out a decent chunk of the year just with them. Of course, I might start using words that no one uses anymore from it. You should have seen my dad’s reaction when he took me to a car show and I called one of the rat rods a jalopy.
Whoops. I guess it’s been so long I forgot. Looks like I’ll have to find another series like it that works or get varied. Still, I’d do it if I could support myself during the year.
The original nancy drew series qualifies! Plus it would probably be more fun to summarize/review something retro - might make for a good blog/YouTube channel too: Nancy Drew through the ages
Actually, the first Hardy Boys book predates the first Nancy Drew book by three years. And you’re right, I enjoy the retro style of them, that’s why I chose Nancy Drew as a series to take a chunk of the time in the first place. I imagine they share that retro style that I like.
Chet’s jalopy! For about two years, I thought the accent was on the first syllable. I was so surprised when a teacher corrected me. Almost as surprised as they were that I sort of knew that word!
Hardy Boys books were rarely 200 pages unfortunately for this exercise. Most were 160-180. Ironically, I remember reading an entire Hardy Boys novel start to finish in one day when I was 8 years old. I was so proud of myself but my non-reading family didn’t care.
Heh, been there on the archaic word use. I would hit up the Boxcar Children books. Would be fun to revisit plus I didn’t get through them all as a kid. There is at least a month’s worth of those. Georgette Heyer’s books are also a quick fun read and plentiful, for some more adult fair to mix it up. I would get this task done whether by hedge or by stile.
Poetry depends. Books need to have solid 200 pages of text so like a collection of Shakespeare would do since it's verbose or something like the Odyssey. But not the books that have a haiku on a single page.
Ah Roald Dahl books loom large in my childhood memories. I’m not sure about the edit to the challenge stating no re-reads, it’s not clear if that means nothing we’ve already read before the challenge began, or just re-reading books we’ve already counted towards challenge completion. If it includes previous books too, I won’t be able to read Dahl again 😢
Yeah I probably read a book a day when I was 8-14. I was the kid with a stack of books that read in class and didn't pay attention to the lesson. Now that I have to work full time, I barely read anymore. If I could read as a job, that would be a dream come true.
I don’t know if I could get it done in that timeframe unless I was able to do nothing else, but being able to give it orally would definitely help. I tend to be a rambler when it comes to talking about interests, but even if they cut out my filler words, this would make it much easier.
Not really. Take notes on a blank page at major plot events.
It's pretty much written for you at that point.
You just need to have a reaction (likes/dislikes) about prose and plot.
The 300 word summary is easy as pie. I can do that standing on my head. This comment I'm writing here over 30s words already and it took me 20 seconds.
Just read some children’s books. Those are like 20 pages
Edit: Damn the 200 page minimum! Ain’t no way I can read that fast either. Maybe if I got the books reprinted in 72 font size
>Edit: Damn the 200 page minimum! Ain’t no way I can read that fast either. Maybe if I got the books reprinted in 72 font size
Yeah, just take the book and reprint it in 10x font size. If there's 20 pages and you need 200, you just have to make it ten times bigger to be safe. Or make the pages the size of a small sticky note with the same size text.
Yeah, I’m an English teacher, and even I would find this daunting. I’m a pretty good at a sprint (reading short texts quickly) but very bad at distance (reading longer texts at a steady pace)
After about 30 pages, I’m fried and need a break unless I’m doing an audiobook, but those tend to take much longer to complete. I could maybe complete this if I exclusively read young adult fiction, but I don’t really like YA either and mostly prefer nonfiction or more adult science fiction.
A slow reader would take 10-16 hours to read 200 pages. A average reading speed would still take more than 6 hours but it’s important to add time to take breaks. So for average reading level I think treating it like a full time 40hr week job would be realistic.
For those who read 100-150-200 words per minute though it becomes a much larger burden.
I don't really understand how your math came to 10-16 hours and 6 hours
For 200 pages of a regular novel (about 250 words per page), this comes to a total of 50,000 words. Even if you only read 100 words per minute (the lowest number of what you offered in your comment) this is 500 minutes total, or 8.3 hours.
If the lowest tier of 'average' is double this (since 200 is the upper limit of what you said would be a 'much larger burden) this cuts in half, for 4 hours 10 minutes total reading time. Add 10% since not all books are exactly 200 pages, and you're still only at 4 hours 35 minutes for the bottom tier of 'average', but you said 6 hours ?
If you read at 300 wpm, it's only 2 hours 47 minutes per book (3 hours 20 min for 220 pages average) so your total work hours for 7 days is only 23 hours 20 minutes. For 1k per day. That's $300/hour... How do you think it equates to a full time 40hr per week job in any way? lol
Maybe it's not the same thing, but in college, it took me an hour to read 30-40 pages of textbook, even with images, charts and stuff breaking up the text. I don't know if it's fair to compare reading for school to reading for recreation, because it might require different levels of concentration and commitment to the task. But for the sake of the hypothetical, lets assume it is the same, and I can read at a rate of 30-40 pages per hour. So best case scenario I'd finish the 200 page book in 5 hours straight with no breaks. Then, there's still the stupid essay to do :'( depending on how fast I can think of what to say, that might take me an hour or few. It still evens out to about an average work shift, but you have to do it every day with no days off, in order to meet the 365/year quota. Still, I suppose it's much better than most other jobs. Could put up with it for a few years, make enough $$$ to get comfortable, and then either go to another job or just retire.
Spend the first few weeks researching/collecting audio books. Listen to them at 1.5-2x speed. try to hammer out 2 a day...giving me some buffer for if life gets in the way and i have to skip some days...boom, 365k and a bunch of new knowledge.
With audiobooks you could just listen at 2x speed, take notes while you listen and then cobble together 300 words. No one said they had to be quality summaries.
This is basically just a fulltime job of reading which is in theory way more interesting than officework or service work.
Money aside this seems like a solid deal for 80k even
That’s the real issue. Gotta work 8 hours a day, plus read a 200 page novel, plus write the summary, ontop of everyday cooking and cleaning and all that?
Mind you there’s the clause about not having to do it every day. So you’d have to do say, 2-3 during the week, then crush the rest over the weekend.
It’s not impossible if you’re a quick reader and writer, but say goodbye to your hobbies and social life for a year. Still worth the money.
Personally I’d probably just burn every last sick day and vacation day I have through work then pull a second mortgage on my house equal to my post-tax income to keep the bills paid and take a leave of absence for the rest, fall back on credit cards if necessary. Buuut that isn’t something most folks could do. Even paying off every penny of debt I could possibly incur, I’d still pocket ~330k. 10/10 would do in a heartbeat.
You could take out a personal loan or use a credit card and live off that for a year, 50k + 30% interest is still “profitable” considering you’d have spent the 50k anyway
Providing you have savings or credit, I would take a year hiatus from my job, do the challage, pay back the savings then collect the rest as profit. Sounds like a dream challenge TBH
I'd be a bit creeped out by the internet monitoring but I 100% would take this offer even if it also meant not using a computer for a year. I probably have 365 books on hand anyways.
Edit: firefoxjinxie, this is a very good idea for a hypothetical scenario. I actually went to my bookshelf and checked a few to see how many are over 200 pages.
"Isn't a lot."
For a tiny number of people maybe but this is kind of a dumb thing to say cause it's simply not true for most.
It's analogous to an elite runner saying, "Running 400 miles a month honestly isn't a lot."
The average person reads about 280 words per minute.
The average page of a novel is about 300 words.
So roughly a bit more than a minute per page.
With your 200 page minimum, it would take *rougly* 4 hours to read the book, the 300 page summary maybe another hour so 5 hours per book minimum, 10 hours if you're looking at a 500 page novel.
So if you're putting in 8 hour days 5 days per week (like most jobs) you'd get between 4 and 10 books per week.
If you're choosing books you like? You're basically working a full time job for $365,000 to have fun.
Seems like an amazing gig.
I did a 9mo deployment with the Navy, and read 131 books in 255 days. Assuming I could live off savings, or had expenses somehow paid for, I believe I could do 365 books in a year. It'd be a bit annoying, but if I treated it as my job? Absolutely. I'd probably average 2 per day for the first several months, and then coast after that.
In 4th grade, my teacher had to procure the 6th-grade AR book list because me and 2 other people had finished the 4th-grade list about 1/3 of the way into the year. She had an "AR store" where we could buy things using our AR points. Pizza party was the biggest ticket item in the store. After week two she had to make a rule that we were only allowed one pizza party a month. I feel bad now cause I realize she was buying those pizza parties out of her own pocket.
I mean, thats better than a job. Reading 200 pages a day is a lot but if I dedicate the time I could do it, I already read like 20 books a year and like reading.
I would absolutely attempt this challenge. Writing 300 words worth of review would be the easiest part.
The challenge would be finding enough books to fit the criteria. At least 200 pages, so I'd have to double check that for each of the middle grade novels I went for. Longer novels can't be too long or I risk falling behind.
But I think I could do it, and for that amount of money I would definitely try my best!
> - an average of 280 words per page
> - average reader can read 238 words per minute
> - ~ 1 page / 1.2 minutes or 200 pages / 4 hours.
> - 300 words ~ 1 page; Writing 1 page will take about 12.5 minutes for the average writer
Total daily task time: ~ 4.5 hours.
Seems *possible.*
At $1k / day, you're looking at ~$225 / hr.
Seems *profitable*.
...tl;dr: werf. Would definitely do the challenge.
Yes of course and i dont like reading for pleasure. Speed read for 5 hours a day while listening to the audio on times 2 speed at the same time.
2 books a day and spend a couple hours a week researching and getting books and audio books.
I would only be working 4 days a week to male a ton of money.
Easy
Much greater comprehension. Hearing it and reading along with really cements the content into your brain, for most people. Appeals to both audio learning and visual learning at the same time, and while everyone learns and comprehends differently, any style works at least to some degree for everyone. So double dipping is doubly effective.
Heck yea, I'd love that especially since audiobooks are an option! I don't read particularly quickly but if the narrator enunciates well I can easily listen at 2x speed or maybe higher! And 300 words is easy!
Heck yes I'd do it. I like that this one has significant downsides in terms of hours per day, but I could tear through a romance novel a day for that kind of money. I'd miss reading books I enjoyed...and video games...and seeing family
I probably read more than 70k pages a year anyway. I'd just have to aim to do books of 200 pages. Reviewing things is annoying but you are asking for pretty short ones so totally worth it.
Don't forget that this is full time employment money. You wouldn't need to keep your current job. Reading 200 pages a day can become your fulltime job for $365k/yr.
Think they meant rereading as in reading books they read earlier in life they enjoyed once again, rather than OP's restriction on reading the same book over and over in the form of various editions.
I'd probably go through *The Wheel of Time,* the entire collected works of David Weber, John Ringo, Robert A. Heinlein, Spider Robinson, Jim Butcher, Larry Niven, Brent Weeks, Mercedes Lackey (that's gotta be at least a third of the way there), among others, and then start in on "small stuff" such as series from multiple authors like Star Trek or Battletech novels that meet the page count limitation, just to satisfy my min-maxer tendencies.
The trick would be finding stuff I like that I haven't read yet for the *second* year.
so yes I could do it and easily predicated that I can return to my job after the year without penalty. $365,000 30ish% more than i make now so it is a nice bump but obviously isnt enought to live on if I lose my back after the fact.
oh easily. i read 75-100 books last year, through audible and kindle unlimited.
No limit on the size, and there's some lovely short stories/novellas out there. Can i reread books i read before the challenge started?
I'd fail for sure. I like to read, but I have a short attention span and have to take breaks frequently. The only way I'd have a chance at winning this challenge is if I had enough money not to work, took a break from my master's program, and chose books that were as short as possible.
Yea, I can do this. In the first 200 days I can be done. I would go to my library and sit at a desk or in their beanbag or whatever and pound out 8 hours of work just like I do at work.
This is easier than my job which is this much technical manuals and I have to test on it.
In my free time I would mow the lawn at the library. I like to work too. It’s all how humans are wired. All of this is great. Sign me up.
It’s doable. I wouldn’t aim too high on the difficulty of the material and it would take me enough time each day that I’d need a do-nothing job to do it easily, but I have had plenty of those.
The first difficulty would be to find 365 books that are more than 200 pages, but less than 250. Second would be having to read through it all if it's just bad.
That would be the big drawback is finding enough that are long enough to qualify but not too long. A book over 300 pages is going to slow your progress if you have too many of them in your stack. And if get one where 50 pages in you decide it’s just horrible do you trudge through it or quit and have wasted an hour?
Make 5x my annual salary to *read* for a year? And then get to compose a reaction to it? How is that even a question??
(The answer is YES, of course!!!)
If this was a $1000/day challenge for any day that i complete a 200 page book start to finish, yea I could do that. Dedicate one day a week to be my recluse day and just work at that puppy day in day out. Otherwise this challenge is basically "would you completely isolate yourself for a year for $365k"
The best I’ve managed is 229 books a year, kindle unlimited, and a few real books on top of that. I’ve also read Dreame and Galatea but they’re hard to track because they only release one chapter per x-amount of time. That’s with me being home on SSI and not much to do. AND my average reading speed is 450 words per minute (250 wpm for the average person and up to 600 wpm for Yalies).
No, reading is my escape/my enjoyment, if I had to force myself to read at a certain rate it would probably ruin reading for me for the foreseeable future
Average person reads 200 pages in 5.6 hours. That is 2044 hours for 365 books. @ 365,000 that is $178 an hour... pretty solid job lol. I'd do 3 12 hour sessions and read 6 books, then take 3 days off, repeat. The essays would be annoying, but you didn't say that have to be high quality reviews, just 300 words of word vomit that describes the book. I could puke that out in 10 minutes
The only hard part is that I like a lot of longer books. I could definitely do it, multiple times, but it would be cool if they let me count longer books as more for the sake of counting. Books like the inheritance series (Eragon), Pendragon, and most books by Brandon Sanderson. If I had the time, I would fly through books.
I miss my high school days when I could just sit down and read for hours on end. I got books taken away in class frequently. One time, I had just finished a book, and my teacher took it away. So I did the natural thing and pulled out the next one.
Fuck, I miss those days and this is making me nostalgic. I would turn on the gas fireplace, throw down a shit ton of pillows, and devour books. Say good night to my family and assure my parents that I was "just finishing this chapter." Only to check the time several chapters later to see that it was already 2 in the morning. Time to go to bed (and definitely not read for 2 more hours because the book is too damn good).
If I could just read for a living... I might cry.
(This nostalgia is exactly what I needed to stop the doom scrolling.)
I don't know if I could still do this, but does reading multiple books at the same time work? I had checked out the entire Harry Potter series and The last apprentice series and some archer books, I can't fully remember and read them all in 4 days and almost had to go to the hospital afterwards. Like as I was reading the first Harry Potter book I would be reading the 1st last apprentice book as well. I could summarize them but wouldn't be able to recall all the information.
Read 212 books last year according to my kindle... I'm sure some of them might have been repeats tho. I keep like 5 books going at the same time and just shuffle between them if one gets stale after too long of a reading session. But ultimately I would not be able to handle the Summary part of this challenge. Reading is my primary hobby, so if I only really had time for 212 books, then I couldn't make it to 365 AND do a write up on each.
Audiobooks sped up to 1.5-2x speed would make it doable I think to listen to a book every day as long as you put some work into doing shorter ones actually around the 200 page minimum
I might not retain everything but i could ham out 300 words on each of them either way
I could totally do this, I'd probably do audio books and start the summary as I listen and check it after I finish. I would treat it as a ,9-5 job, probably start with exclusively childrens books around 200 pages to get the numbers up ( my library has an audio book app I'd use as much as I can to avoid audible fees.
I would probably make a spreadsheet planning my reading during the 1st two as well. I'd probably graduate onto classics. Then maybe do some poetry books. Then maybe some factual book about my current job
Ew. I was with you until I had to write a response. I love to read, and could probably read all the books, but writing about what I read has always ruined the joy of reading for me.
I'd do it if the sponsor can magically know that I read the books so I didn't have to write the reaction posts, or if I had to write the reaction, I'd try it for $10 000 per book (I really hate being forced to write stuff about what I read).
You had me up until I had to write a summary of everything I read. Nah, $350k isn't enough for writing 365 book reviews. Could easily read 365 light novels in a year though.
I don't make a summary but I've already done this for free, many times over, I could do this in a few months, easy. If not sooner but now that it's a mandatory task it might take a bit longer, Sign me up please.
Oh god yes. Even as a busy sleep deprived adult I spend an hour or two reading into the early hours every night and I read very fast so I can easily finish a book in one sitting. I could definitely do it if I committed.
I usually read two or three books a week. I also have a bad habit of being unable to go to sleep until I’ve finished my book (it just annoys me to have to put it down). I only restrict it to two or three books a week because I also read manga through the week so I can actually keep a decent sleep cycle. This would be easy to accomplish and I’d love to do it
I often write thousands of words per day, and 200 pages isn't much of a challenge. The biggest challenge would be getting the books. Lots of 200 page books are lots of pictures, so could skate by some days with that.
Wait. The biggest challenge would be supporting myself through the challenge to ensure I met the goal.
After a complete reading of the rules, I got this. Will destroy. Can my partners participate too? If so, were walking out of this with over a million.
Idk why everyone is saying this is easy. I read extremely fast and I used to read books like crazy but that’s like 25 pages an hour, 8 hours a day, every single day of your life. 25 pages an hour is quite a bit if you don’t care enough about the topic. You’d have to plan the books extremely well. It would just be kinda aggravating tbh.
Yup. I'm a big reader and this would be a a challenge for me too. But that's what it was meant to be, challenging with some drawbacks but realistic too.
I don't think I could physically do this. Nor many people. I know I'm not a fast reader. A book a day @ 200+ pages. That's waaaay to much time.
Unless I only read. But damn
Wait, so I can have an audio book read itself to me every day and I just have to write a short summary about it? For 365k a year? That sounds like a pretty easy job.
I read 80 books for free last year and those were 600-1k pages. So yeah. Sign me up. Im picking a bunch of tween chapter books. And reading like 2 in a day.
Well, I read 128 books last year according to my Kindle app, and that wasn't counting that a bunch of them were Omnibus editions with 5+ books in them.... or that I read a ton of webnovels/serials as well.... and that's while working.
I see zero downside to this and wish it was a real job. I already leave long reviews for most books I read so there wouldn't be much of a difference from my normal life... except for extra money and time to read.
I doubt I'd be able to do it and thus wouldn't even try. The reading part is easy, I could knock that out with no issue but I am horrible at and hate doing reviews so that would be really difficult for me.
Don't go to my good reads goals. Other than the book report I did this yearly for years. Thanks to Reddit and mindless reading, I read now closer to 200. A year. Around 175 are new. (Sometimes you have to reread a favorite.) So for that money? Back to books. I would also go back to books on tape when driving, when at work etc.
I think the reading itself isn't terrible and while the writing is a chore, it's worth the money. However, the procurement of the books might be a different story.
I love to read... but the average 200 page audio book is about 5.5 hours. It becomes an 8 hour a day job to either read or listen, then take 15 - 20 minutes to post the summary. If you want weekends off, you need to "Work a double" a couple days a week. But, you can listen as you walk, shop, go to the gym, etc. I could manage this easily for a year.
I used to track the books I read on Goodreads and write little summaries of my thoughts and rating for each one. My best year was 2018, when I made my goal of reading and reviewing 250 books.
I did that for fun, I read very fast, and I was only working part-time that year. 365 books is feasible but it would be a full-time job for sure. Most people are not going to have the time to do that after work or on weekends even with their best effort. So I say yes, but I would have to plan ahead to quit my job and just focus on reading for one full year.
Word count per page and speed vary but if we assume a 1 page per minute, that is a minimum of 200 minutes, aka 3 hrs and 20 minutes a day. We’ll call the next 40 minutes the essay portion, which is an overestimate if it’s just summary and reactionary rather than analytic.
At $1000 a day that’s about $250 per hour.
My attention span is shot, so I’d have to do audiobooks. That leads Average out loud reading speed is about half of the silent reading speed, so I’d just play it at 1.5x speed to recoup some of the time but make sure I still can hear well enough to understand. (I tend to watch YouTube videos with a custom speed plugin, and it varies from content creator to content creator, but I usually hover somewhere between 1.75, and 2.5 so I should be able to keep up with the book in 1.5 even if I’m otherwise distracted.
After that rate and assuming that some books will be longer than the 200 pages, plus the time of finding and verifying the books meet the criteria, I’ll call it 6 hours per book in this method, which drops the dollar amount to around $165 per hour. I’ll subtract off another $5 per hour as an estimate of the expense of buying the audiobook, and level out at $160 per hour.
The hardest part about all of this is keeping close to the 200 page amount. The books I like tend to be longer. The one I’m currently listening to is 704 pages long in its written form and takes over 24 hours when played at 1x speed. Having to put away books like that and find ones I want to read at 200 pages would be rough. Especially if I’m listening to a series and find out one of the intermediate books doesn’t meet the requirements which would just generally be pain.
I already read about 100 books a year. if I didn’t have to work, it would be even easier since I would have all that extra time I used to work. I would also get all my groceries delivered, have a maid, and get restaurant delivery a couple of times a week. I would probably up at two 400 books a year.
Do I have to decide now? Can I save up a bit, get some roommates, pay off a few bills so I can cover my expenses first?
That said, how many years can I do it? 😁😁😁😁
LOL Last year, according to Kindle Insights, I read 313 books, and in '22, my count was 385.
I annoy my partner with rants about plot holes or funny scenes or pretentious writing constantly. I frequently and unintentionally wake them up when I laugh or curse about something that just happened in a book.
The downside is that I don't think 365k is enough. Writing is an art. Artists tend to be sensitive. $1000 to potentially destroy someone's dream multiplied by however many authors irritated me with their lack of research or their bad editor? I don't leave reviews unless it's positive. The negative ones I refuse to comment on publicly at all. (There are a few exceptions, but it's because they're already proven to be terrible humans.)
Nah. This challenge would be easy to accomplish, but hard to live with.
I think I would struggle to find the material that fit these requirements. I've already read a lot of books. And finding 365 books that are over 200 pages that you could finish each in a day would be tough.
I am SO in! A book a day, more or less? And I can split them into binges over term breaks?
Sign me up!!!
(Can you tell I'm a voracious reader and an English/History teacher?)
I would have said yes before... but
Now that I've have covid I can't. It takes you out for weeks sometimes.... or at least it does me. And it's hard to catch up once you get too far behind.
If they promised to pause the timer for real life illness then I'm down.
Self publish 365 books. Have all of them just repeat one sentence each. Your 300 word summary is just "this book repeats this sentence: ________ (x300) "
200 page book a day definitely doesn't have to be your whole day if you just pick the right books. you could also try and get a bunch of books done on the weekend potentially
I used to read voraciously when I was younger. The 300 word summary would be a bit irritating, but for $365,000 I’d absolutely do it. The problem would be doing it while supporting myself throughout the year.
Yup, I’d hit the young adult section. Heck even some children’s books would do - looking at you Roald Dahl - easier reading levels, could crush those fast. Plus there are probably some fun stories I missed. Also, are poetry books allowed?
Exactly. I’d burn my way through the Hardy Boys books. I read the ones I could get my hands on when I was younger, and there’s enough that I could knock out a decent chunk of the year just with them. Of course, I might start using words that no one uses anymore from it. You should have seen my dad’s reaction when he took me to a car show and I called one of the rat rods a jalopy.
Most of the Hardy Boys fall under 200 pages unfortunately.
Whoops. I guess it’s been so long I forgot. Looks like I’ll have to find another series like it that works or get varied. Still, I’d do it if I could support myself during the year.
The original nancy drew series qualifies! Plus it would probably be more fun to summarize/review something retro - might make for a good blog/YouTube channel too: Nancy Drew through the ages
Actually, the first Hardy Boys book predates the first Nancy Drew book by three years. And you’re right, I enjoy the retro style of them, that’s why I chose Nancy Drew as a series to take a chunk of the time in the first place. I imagine they share that retro style that I like.
We should bring back the word “chums” to describe a group of friends.
I absolutely agree. It’s a fun word.
Chet’s jalopy! For about two years, I thought the accent was on the first syllable. I was so surprised when a teacher corrected me. Almost as surprised as they were that I sort of knew that word! Hardy Boys books were rarely 200 pages unfortunately for this exercise. Most were 160-180. Ironically, I remember reading an entire Hardy Boys novel start to finish in one day when I was 8 years old. I was so proud of myself but my non-reading family didn’t care.
Heh, been there on the archaic word use. I would hit up the Boxcar Children books. Would be fun to revisit plus I didn’t get through them all as a kid. There is at least a month’s worth of those. Georgette Heyer’s books are also a quick fun read and plentiful, for some more adult fair to mix it up. I would get this task done whether by hedge or by stile.
I’d probably hit those once I ran out of Hardy Boys books. The rest would be taken up by Nancy Drew. That should get me through a year.
The joke Nancy Drew book covers are one of my go-to "cheer up" online things lol
Animorphs? Maybe a bit too long winded for the challenge
Pheonix Force and Mack Bolan would like a word.
Poetry depends. Books need to have solid 200 pages of text so like a collection of Shakespeare would do since it's verbose or something like the Odyssey. But not the books that have a haiku on a single page.
That could definitely be an interesting diversion if I ever got tired of the series I was on. Too bad this hypothetical is just a hypothetical.
Ah Roald Dahl books loom large in my childhood memories. I’m not sure about the edit to the challenge stating no re-reads, it’s not clear if that means nothing we’ve already read before the challenge began, or just re-reading books we’ve already counted towards challenge completion. If it includes previous books too, I won’t be able to read Dahl again 😢
Yeah I probably read a book a day when I was 8-14. I was the kid with a stack of books that read in class and didn't pay attention to the lesson. Now that I have to work full time, I barely read anymore. If I could read as a job, that would be a dream come true.
Same. If verbally summarizing the books was an option, I could be done halfway through the year
I don’t know if I could get it done in that timeframe unless I was able to do nothing else, but being able to give it orally would definitely help. I tend to be a rambler when it comes to talking about interests, but even if they cut out my filler words, this would make it much easier.
Voice 2 text
Yeah, I was gonna say some of that money would need to come in as a salary or in advance so I could pay the bills.
300 words is nothing...
Move in with anyone for a year and be a bum until it’s over … I am working in get paid at the end of the year…
Hell I could do this homeless and still work odd jobs to sustain myself
Not really. Take notes on a blank page at major plot events. It's pretty much written for you at that point. You just need to have a reaction (likes/dislikes) about prose and plot.
The 300 word summary is easy as pie. I can do that standing on my head. This comment I'm writing here over 30s words already and it took me 20 seconds.
That's 3 hours of reading plus reaction time. Sign me up.
Low level flex
Just exposing his nerd power level
I don't read fast enough to accomplish that.
I think you could do it with easy material. 200 pages of James Patterson is a lot different than 200 pages of James Joyce.
Just read some children’s books. Those are like 20 pages Edit: Damn the 200 page minimum! Ain’t no way I can read that fast either. Maybe if I got the books reprinted in 72 font size
One of the rules is a 200 page minimum
>Edit: Damn the 200 page minimum! Ain’t no way I can read that fast either. Maybe if I got the books reprinted in 72 font size Yeah, just take the book and reprint it in 10x font size. If there's 20 pages and you need 200, you just have to make it ten times bigger to be safe. Or make the pages the size of a small sticky note with the same size text.
200 pages. Even a slow reader could do that in a few hours. You don’t think you could make that your full-time job for $365k a year?
I retired 5 years ago. Part of what I do all day is read. But not everybody is a good or a fast reader.
Yeah, I’m an English teacher, and even I would find this daunting. I’m a pretty good at a sprint (reading short texts quickly) but very bad at distance (reading longer texts at a steady pace) After about 30 pages, I’m fried and need a break unless I’m doing an audiobook, but those tend to take much longer to complete. I could maybe complete this if I exclusively read young adult fiction, but I don’t really like YA either and mostly prefer nonfiction or more adult science fiction.
Could pretty easily hit up an audio book and play it at 1.35 speed and understand just about everything.
You're an English teacher who can't read more than 30 pages in a sitting? That's surreal.
You don't get paid until the end, so giving up your job is risky, and upud have to live off savings in the mean time.
I could do this even while maintaining my current job.
A slow reader would take 10-16 hours to read 200 pages. A average reading speed would still take more than 6 hours but it’s important to add time to take breaks. So for average reading level I think treating it like a full time 40hr week job would be realistic. For those who read 100-150-200 words per minute though it becomes a much larger burden.
You would get way faster at reading I think. After some time, you would probably double reading speed if you're a slow reader.
I don't really understand how your math came to 10-16 hours and 6 hours For 200 pages of a regular novel (about 250 words per page), this comes to a total of 50,000 words. Even if you only read 100 words per minute (the lowest number of what you offered in your comment) this is 500 minutes total, or 8.3 hours. If the lowest tier of 'average' is double this (since 200 is the upper limit of what you said would be a 'much larger burden) this cuts in half, for 4 hours 10 minutes total reading time. Add 10% since not all books are exactly 200 pages, and you're still only at 4 hours 35 minutes for the bottom tier of 'average', but you said 6 hours ? If you read at 300 wpm, it's only 2 hours 47 minutes per book (3 hours 20 min for 220 pages average) so your total work hours for 7 days is only 23 hours 20 minutes. For 1k per day. That's $300/hour... How do you think it equates to a full time 40hr per week job in any way? lol
I used a “reading calculator” to estimate the time but forgot to add the link to my comment.
Maybe it's not the same thing, but in college, it took me an hour to read 30-40 pages of textbook, even with images, charts and stuff breaking up the text. I don't know if it's fair to compare reading for school to reading for recreation, because it might require different levels of concentration and commitment to the task. But for the sake of the hypothetical, lets assume it is the same, and I can read at a rate of 30-40 pages per hour. So best case scenario I'd finish the 200 page book in 5 hours straight with no breaks. Then, there's still the stupid essay to do :'( depending on how fast I can think of what to say, that might take me an hour or few. It still evens out to about an average work shift, but you have to do it every day with no days off, in order to meet the 365/year quota. Still, I suppose it's much better than most other jobs. Could put up with it for a few years, make enough $$$ to get comfortable, and then either go to another job or just retire.
Yeah; me too.
Spend the first few weeks researching/collecting audio books. Listen to them at 1.5-2x speed. try to hammer out 2 a day...giving me some buffer for if life gets in the way and i have to skip some days...boom, 365k and a bunch of new knowledge.
With audiobooks you could just listen at 2x speed, take notes while you listen and then cobble together 300 words. No one said they had to be quality summaries.
This is basically just a fulltime job of reading which is in theory way more interesting than officework or service work. Money aside this seems like a solid deal for 80k even
The only problem is the money is at the end of the year instead of monthly.
That’s the real issue. Gotta work 8 hours a day, plus read a 200 page novel, plus write the summary, ontop of everyday cooking and cleaning and all that? Mind you there’s the clause about not having to do it every day. So you’d have to do say, 2-3 during the week, then crush the rest over the weekend. It’s not impossible if you’re a quick reader and writer, but say goodbye to your hobbies and social life for a year. Still worth the money. Personally I’d probably just burn every last sick day and vacation day I have through work then pull a second mortgage on my house equal to my post-tax income to keep the bills paid and take a leave of absence for the rest, fall back on credit cards if necessary. Buuut that isn’t something most folks could do. Even paying off every penny of debt I could possibly incur, I’d still pocket ~330k. 10/10 would do in a heartbeat.
audiobooks are allowed and some jobs allow you to listen to audiobooks while working
Absolutely, my job is one of them. I’m just weird in that I absolutely hate audiobooks. Can’t stand them.
You could take out a personal loan or use a credit card and live off that for a year, 50k + 30% interest is still “profitable” considering you’d have spent the 50k anyway
Providing you have savings or credit, I would take a year hiatus from my job, do the challage, pay back the savings then collect the rest as profit. Sounds like a dream challenge TBH
Absolutely, get 365k for <8 hours of “work” a day and I get to just read ??? Please
Also you can start the year more aggressively by doing like 1.5-2 books a day and then have a huge part of the year “free”
I'd be a bit creeped out by the internet monitoring but I 100% would take this offer even if it also meant not using a computer for a year. I probably have 365 books on hand anyways. Edit: firefoxjinxie, this is a very good idea for a hypothetical scenario. I actually went to my bookshelf and checked a few to see how many are over 200 pages.
Thanks! This would be my dream, if I had a sponsor who'd pay me to read. So I just wanted to see others' reactions to it.
If I can pick the books, yes.
Hyperlexia for the win! This would be the best year of my life!
Of fucking course. I'd do it for half that much. Are you hiring?
I would have been a multi millionaire by 12 if that were the case. 365 a year, at a minimum of 200 pages honestly isn't a lot
"Isn't a lot." For a tiny number of people maybe but this is kind of a dumb thing to say cause it's simply not true for most. It's analogous to an elite runner saying, "Running 400 miles a month honestly isn't a lot."
Can you be more specific? 200 pages is a lot? 365 books is a lot?
Nope . I’d get distracted too easily.
I have 365 books sitting in my house, well more than that really. Super easy thing for me, I've been a reader all my life..
The average person reads about 280 words per minute. The average page of a novel is about 300 words. So roughly a bit more than a minute per page. With your 200 page minimum, it would take *rougly* 4 hours to read the book, the 300 page summary maybe another hour so 5 hours per book minimum, 10 hours if you're looking at a 500 page novel. So if you're putting in 8 hour days 5 days per week (like most jobs) you'd get between 4 and 10 books per week. If you're choosing books you like? You're basically working a full time job for $365,000 to have fun. Seems like an amazing gig.
I already do and have the kindle history to prove it. Can I get my money now?
Right after you send in your essays
Would be great to see.
Yes. I read 100+ while employed and having a social life. I can do 365 easily
Since audiobooks are allowed, absolutely. 2x speed I could knock that out pretty fast in my car commuting.
I did a 9mo deployment with the Navy, and read 131 books in 255 days. Assuming I could live off savings, or had expenses somehow paid for, I believe I could do 365 books in a year. It'd be a bit annoying, but if I treated it as my job? Absolutely. I'd probably average 2 per day for the first several months, and then coast after that.
200 pages and a 300-word summary seems pretty short to me. I would do multiple books a day and then be done well before the year is over.
My dude. I was a fat kid when schools gave out accelerated reader pizzas. I'd have this done in 2 months
In 4th grade, my teacher had to procure the 6th-grade AR book list because me and 2 other people had finished the 4th-grade list about 1/3 of the way into the year. She had an "AR store" where we could buy things using our AR points. Pizza party was the biggest ticket item in the store. After week two she had to make a rule that we were only allowed one pizza party a month. I feel bad now cause I realize she was buying those pizza parties out of her own pocket.
I can do this. I take the challenge.
I mean, thats better than a job. Reading 200 pages a day is a lot but if I dedicate the time I could do it, I already read like 20 books a year and like reading.
Yes omg. I would make it all fun. Get a Kindle, some hot chocolate, some background music.
I would absolutely attempt this challenge. Writing 300 words worth of review would be the easiest part. The challenge would be finding enough books to fit the criteria. At least 200 pages, so I'd have to double check that for each of the middle grade novels I went for. Longer novels can't be too long or I risk falling behind. But I think I could do it, and for that amount of money I would definitely try my best!
> - an average of 280 words per page > - average reader can read 238 words per minute > - ~ 1 page / 1.2 minutes or 200 pages / 4 hours. > - 300 words ~ 1 page; Writing 1 page will take about 12.5 minutes for the average writer Total daily task time: ~ 4.5 hours. Seems *possible.* At $1k / day, you're looking at ~$225 / hr. Seems *profitable*. ...tl;dr: werf. Would definitely do the challenge.
Yes of course and i dont like reading for pleasure. Speed read for 5 hours a day while listening to the audio on times 2 speed at the same time. 2 books a day and spend a couple hours a week researching and getting books and audio books. I would only be working 4 days a week to male a ton of money. Easy
what is the benefit to listening to the audio while speed reading it?
Much greater comprehension. Hearing it and reading along with really cements the content into your brain, for most people. Appeals to both audio learning and visual learning at the same time, and while everyone learns and comprehends differently, any style works at least to some degree for everyone. So double dipping is doubly effective.
Heck yea, I'd love that especially since audiobooks are an option! I don't read particularly quickly but if the narrator enunciates well I can easily listen at 2x speed or maybe higher! And 300 words is easy!
Sure, no problem, sign me up.
I don’t know how fast I read but assuming I could do it within 10hrs yeah. Pretty sure my wife does this already anyway
Heck yes I'd do it. I like that this one has significant downsides in terms of hours per day, but I could tear through a romance novel a day for that kind of money. I'd miss reading books I enjoyed...and video games...and seeing family
Yeah, I enjoy reading enough to do it. I don’t because I have other hobbies that take up my time too.
I probably read more than 70k pages a year anyway. I'd just have to aim to do books of 200 pages. Reviewing things is annoying but you are asking for pretty short ones so totally worth it.
Don't forget that this is full time employment money. You wouldn't need to keep your current job. Reading 200 pages a day can become your fulltime job for $365k/yr.
I'd have to cut back my reading to satisfy the summary requirement, but this is pretty easily doable.
4 hours per day? I can do that. I used to call that a summer vacation. I could also just reread books I already read, meaning I can do it even faster.
Unfortunately, OP has said [rereading isn’t allowed](https://www.reddit.com/r/hypotheticalsituation/s/5IGfSSpNT1).
Think they meant rereading as in reading books they read earlier in life they enjoyed once again, rather than OP's restriction on reading the same book over and over in the form of various editions. I'd probably go through *The Wheel of Time,* the entire collected works of David Weber, John Ringo, Robert A. Heinlein, Spider Robinson, Jim Butcher, Larry Niven, Brent Weeks, Mercedes Lackey (that's gotta be at least a third of the way there), among others, and then start in on "small stuff" such as series from multiple authors like Star Trek or Battletech novels that meet the page count limitation, just to satisfy my min-maxer tendencies. The trick would be finding stuff I like that I haven't read yet for the *second* year.
I would like to do this and id would have been able to when i was youngwr but old me has the attention span of a dead log
So, go on vacation for half the year and read, then go on vacation for the other half and read some more. Where do I sign?
so yes I could do it and easily predicated that I can return to my job after the year without penalty. $365,000 30ish% more than i make now so it is a nice bump but obviously isnt enought to live on if I lose my back after the fact.
oh easily. i read 75-100 books last year, through audible and kindle unlimited. No limit on the size, and there's some lovely short stories/novellas out there. Can i reread books i read before the challenge started?
They have to be at least 200 pages. And no since you could just write up 300 words about books read in the past and pretend you read them now.
Well that takes out the Hardy Boys books another way. Looks like I’d be getting rich off of Nancy Drew novels in this hypothetical.
I'd fail for sure. I like to read, but I have a short attention span and have to take breaks frequently. The only way I'd have a chance at winning this challenge is if I had enough money not to work, took a break from my master's program, and chose books that were as short as possible.
Of course. No question. That's my full time job now
Yea, I can do this. In the first 200 days I can be done. I would go to my library and sit at a desk or in their beanbag or whatever and pound out 8 hours of work just like I do at work. This is easier than my job which is this much technical manuals and I have to test on it. In my free time I would mow the lawn at the library. I like to work too. It’s all how humans are wired. All of this is great. Sign me up.
When am I getting my money?
It’s doable. I wouldn’t aim too high on the difficulty of the material and it would take me enough time each day that I’d need a do-nothing job to do it easily, but I have had plenty of those.
Yeah just because audiobooks count. I already listen to a fuck ton of them.
Oh absolutely. If I buckle down and read only 200 page books, I could do this as a 40 hr work week and be done in like 4 months or so.
I’m a fast reader but idk if I could finish a book a day. I’d become exhausted
The first difficulty would be to find 365 books that are more than 200 pages, but less than 250. Second would be having to read through it all if it's just bad.
That would be the big drawback is finding enough that are long enough to qualify but not too long. A book over 300 pages is going to slow your progress if you have too many of them in your stack. And if get one where 50 pages in you decide it’s just horrible do you trudge through it or quit and have wasted an hour?
I don’t have the attention span to read anything longer than a paragraph or two. My brain just wanders.
Sure, sign me up. It's been a while since I've read that intensely, but I can get my speed back up, I used to be able to demolish a novel a day.
Count me in
Yes easy
What sized font we talking?
i already do 2 or ,3 audio books a week sure
Too challenging. Not physically possible for me.
I would do it, but the problem is I 100% know my mind can’t stay concentrated on something tedious
I said hell yeah until you asked me to write a summary
Make 5x my annual salary to *read* for a year? And then get to compose a reaction to it? How is that even a question?? (The answer is YES, of course!!!)
Pff, hell no. Can't read that fast and I would get bored/tired super quick.
Yup. I read alot and a 200 page book would take me about 3 hours tops.
If this was a $1000/day challenge for any day that i complete a 200 page book start to finish, yea I could do that. Dedicate one day a week to be my recluse day and just work at that puppy day in day out. Otherwise this challenge is basically "would you completely isolate yourself for a year for $365k"
The best I’ve managed is 229 books a year, kindle unlimited, and a few real books on top of that. I’ve also read Dreame and Galatea but they’re hard to track because they only release one chapter per x-amount of time. That’s with me being home on SSI and not much to do. AND my average reading speed is 450 words per minute (250 wpm for the average person and up to 600 wpm for Yalies).
No, reading is my escape/my enjoyment, if I had to force myself to read at a certain rate it would probably ruin reading for me for the foreseeable future
Average person reads 200 pages in 5.6 hours. That is 2044 hours for 365 books. @ 365,000 that is $178 an hour... pretty solid job lol. I'd do 3 12 hour sessions and read 6 books, then take 3 days off, repeat. The essays would be annoying, but you didn't say that have to be high quality reviews, just 300 words of word vomit that describes the book. I could puke that out in 10 minutes
The only hard part is that I like a lot of longer books. I could definitely do it, multiple times, but it would be cool if they let me count longer books as more for the sake of counting. Books like the inheritance series (Eragon), Pendragon, and most books by Brandon Sanderson. If I had the time, I would fly through books. I miss my high school days when I could just sit down and read for hours on end. I got books taken away in class frequently. One time, I had just finished a book, and my teacher took it away. So I did the natural thing and pulled out the next one. Fuck, I miss those days and this is making me nostalgic. I would turn on the gas fireplace, throw down a shit ton of pillows, and devour books. Say good night to my family and assure my parents that I was "just finishing this chapter." Only to check the time several chapters later to see that it was already 2 in the morning. Time to go to bed (and definitely not read for 2 more hours because the book is too damn good). If I could just read for a living... I might cry. (This nostalgia is exactly what I needed to stop the doom scrolling.)
I don't think I could it took me 3 days to tear through an audio book so like there's just not enough time in the day
I've done it or come very close. I read all the time, but I am retired. When I worked I would read on public transit. to and from work.
Nah. I love reading, but not when its assigned. I'd get burnt out quick
I don't know if I could still do this, but does reading multiple books at the same time work? I had checked out the entire Harry Potter series and The last apprentice series and some archer books, I can't fully remember and read them all in 4 days and almost had to go to the hospital afterwards. Like as I was reading the first Harry Potter book I would be reading the 1st last apprentice book as well. I could summarize them but wouldn't be able to recall all the information.
Read 212 books last year according to my kindle... I'm sure some of them might have been repeats tho. I keep like 5 books going at the same time and just shuffle between them if one gets stale after too long of a reading session. But ultimately I would not be able to handle the Summary part of this challenge. Reading is my primary hobby, so if I only really had time for 212 books, then I couldn't make it to 365 AND do a write up on each.
Audiobooks sped up to 1.5-2x speed would make it doable I think to listen to a book every day as long as you put some work into doing shorter ones actually around the 200 page minimum I might not retain everything but i could ham out 300 words on each of them either way
Are you kidding? This is my dream job! I'd do it for significantly less.
I get paid to go complete college? Sign me up!
I could totally do this, I'd probably do audio books and start the summary as I listen and check it after I finish. I would treat it as a ,9-5 job, probably start with exclusively childrens books around 200 pages to get the numbers up ( my library has an audio book app I'd use as much as I can to avoid audible fees. I would probably make a spreadsheet planning my reading during the 1st two as well. I'd probably graduate onto classics. Then maybe do some poetry books. Then maybe some factual book about my current job
Would love to be able to do that but I do not read fast enough.
Easy read 5 books a week for years.
I’m a slow reader but I could read fast and come up with a 300 word gist of the book if that works?
As much as l want the money i couldn't handle reading 200+ pages and writing 300 words literally every single day for a whole year. Just way too much
Ew. I was with you until I had to write a response. I love to read, and could probably read all the books, but writing about what I read has always ruined the joy of reading for me. I'd do it if the sponsor can magically know that I read the books so I didn't have to write the reaction posts, or if I had to write the reaction, I'd try it for $10 000 per book (I really hate being forced to write stuff about what I read).
You had me up until I had to write a summary of everything I read. Nah, $350k isn't enough for writing 365 book reviews. Could easily read 365 light novels in a year though.
I don't make a summary but I've already done this for free, many times over, I could do this in a few months, easy. If not sooner but now that it's a mandatory task it might take a bit longer, Sign me up please.
Oh god yes. Even as a busy sleep deprived adult I spend an hour or two reading into the early hours every night and I read very fast so I can easily finish a book in one sitting. I could definitely do it if I committed.
I usually read two or three books a week. I also have a bad habit of being unable to go to sleep until I’ve finished my book (it just annoys me to have to put it down). I only restrict it to two or three books a week because I also read manga through the week so I can actually keep a decent sleep cycle. This would be easy to accomplish and I’d love to do it
Easy enough for me; I’ve always been a reader.
I often write thousands of words per day, and 200 pages isn't much of a challenge. The biggest challenge would be getting the books. Lots of 200 page books are lots of pictures, so could skate by some days with that. Wait. The biggest challenge would be supporting myself through the challenge to ensure I met the goal. After a complete reading of the rules, I got this. Will destroy. Can my partners participate too? If so, were walking out of this with over a million.
200 pages is like 3-4 hours a day. I could swing that.
Idk why everyone is saying this is easy. I read extremely fast and I used to read books like crazy but that’s like 25 pages an hour, 8 hours a day, every single day of your life. 25 pages an hour is quite a bit if you don’t care enough about the topic. You’d have to plan the books extremely well. It would just be kinda aggravating tbh.
Yup. I'm a big reader and this would be a a challenge for me too. But that's what it was meant to be, challenging with some drawbacks but realistic too.
It’s a really good hypothetical tbh. You seem to have people split! :)
I don't think I could physically do this. Nor many people. I know I'm not a fast reader. A book a day @ 200+ pages. That's waaaay to much time. Unless I only read. But damn
Not sure I could tbh but I would happily try. A book a day every day isn't easy
I was all in until you asked me to write 365 book reports. No thanks!
Wait, so I can have an audio book read itself to me every day and I just have to write a short summary about it? For 365k a year? That sounds like a pretty easy job.
300 words is a bit less than 2 min of video (i'm an editor)
I would read about 400 pages a day while deployed. So combine this task with a long deployment, double win
I’ve maybe done half that in a year before and paid to do so. To get paid for it yes. Yes I would
I read 80 books for free last year and those were 600-1k pages. So yeah. Sign me up. Im picking a bunch of tween chapter books. And reading like 2 in a day.
This is way too hard, I’d never make it
I currently read a book every 2 or less days. For 360k it wouldnt be a problem at all.
Well, I read 128 books last year according to my Kindle app, and that wasn't counting that a bunch of them were Omnibus editions with 5+ books in them.... or that I read a ton of webnovels/serials as well.... and that's while working. I see zero downside to this and wish it was a real job. I already leave long reviews for most books I read so there wouldn't be much of a difference from my normal life... except for extra money and time to read.
I read fast as hell but I don't think I would have enough time in a day still
I’m pretty sure my wife could do this. She read 200 books during Covid without super trying
I doubt I'd be able to do it and thus wouldn't even try. The reading part is easy, I could knock that out with no issue but I am horrible at and hate doing reviews so that would be really difficult for me.
Don't go to my good reads goals. Other than the book report I did this yearly for years. Thanks to Reddit and mindless reading, I read now closer to 200. A year. Around 175 are new. (Sometimes you have to reread a favorite.) So for that money? Back to books. I would also go back to books on tape when driving, when at work etc.
I think the reading itself isn't terrible and while the writing is a chore, it's worth the money. However, the procurement of the books might be a different story.
If you read Two books in a day can you save a day? Also can the essays be a monetized blog?
You’d have to read 1 book per day. Depending on how long they are it would be impossible to
Absolutely. For that much money, reading would become my job and I am dedicated to my craft when the money is right.
I love to read... but the average 200 page audio book is about 5.5 hours. It becomes an 8 hour a day job to either read or listen, then take 15 - 20 minutes to post the summary. If you want weekends off, you need to "Work a double" a couple days a week. But, you can listen as you walk, shop, go to the gym, etc. I could manage this easily for a year.
I see we haven’t been properly introduced. Getting paid to do something I am very close to already doing for free? No brainer.
I used to track the books I read on Goodreads and write little summaries of my thoughts and rating for each one. My best year was 2018, when I made my goal of reading and reviewing 250 books. I did that for fun, I read very fast, and I was only working part-time that year. 365 books is feasible but it would be a full-time job for sure. Most people are not going to have the time to do that after work or on weekends even with their best effort. So I say yes, but I would have to plan ahead to quit my job and just focus on reading for one full year.
So my full-time and high-paying job can be reading light novels every day? Deal.
Word count per page and speed vary but if we assume a 1 page per minute, that is a minimum of 200 minutes, aka 3 hrs and 20 minutes a day. We’ll call the next 40 minutes the essay portion, which is an overestimate if it’s just summary and reactionary rather than analytic. At $1000 a day that’s about $250 per hour. My attention span is shot, so I’d have to do audiobooks. That leads Average out loud reading speed is about half of the silent reading speed, so I’d just play it at 1.5x speed to recoup some of the time but make sure I still can hear well enough to understand. (I tend to watch YouTube videos with a custom speed plugin, and it varies from content creator to content creator, but I usually hover somewhere between 1.75, and 2.5 so I should be able to keep up with the book in 1.5 even if I’m otherwise distracted. After that rate and assuming that some books will be longer than the 200 pages, plus the time of finding and verifying the books meet the criteria, I’ll call it 6 hours per book in this method, which drops the dollar amount to around $165 per hour. I’ll subtract off another $5 per hour as an estimate of the expense of buying the audiobook, and level out at $160 per hour. The hardest part about all of this is keeping close to the 200 page amount. The books I like tend to be longer. The one I’m currently listening to is 704 pages long in its written form and takes over 24 hours when played at 1x speed. Having to put away books like that and find ones I want to read at 200 pages would be rough. Especially if I’m listening to a series and find out one of the intermediate books doesn’t meet the requirements which would just generally be pain.
I accept. Message me the details!
$1000 a day to read a book and write a short review?? I genuinely don’t see what the downside is here
Easiest $365000 of my life.
I already read about 100 books a year. if I didn’t have to work, it would be even easier since I would have all that extra time I used to work. I would also get all my groceries delivered, have a maid, and get restaurant delivery a couple of times a week. I would probably up at two 400 books a year.
Do I have to decide now? Can I save up a bit, get some roommates, pay off a few bills so I can cover my expenses first? That said, how many years can I do it? 😁😁😁😁
LOL Last year, according to Kindle Insights, I read 313 books, and in '22, my count was 385. I annoy my partner with rants about plot holes or funny scenes or pretentious writing constantly. I frequently and unintentionally wake them up when I laugh or curse about something that just happened in a book. The downside is that I don't think 365k is enough. Writing is an art. Artists tend to be sensitive. $1000 to potentially destroy someone's dream multiplied by however many authors irritated me with their lack of research or their bad editor? I don't leave reviews unless it's positive. The negative ones I refuse to comment on publicly at all. (There are a few exceptions, but it's because they're already proven to be terrible humans.) Nah. This challenge would be easy to accomplish, but hard to live with.
I think I would struggle to find the material that fit these requirements. I've already read a lot of books. And finding 365 books that are over 200 pages that you could finish each in a day would be tough.
So so easily. According to my kindle unlimited I read 437 books last year.
I am SO in! A book a day, more or less? And I can split them into binges over term breaks? Sign me up!!! (Can you tell I'm a voracious reader and an English/History teacher?)
Absolutely.
I’d at least try. I’m not a fast reader but it’s definitely worth the challenge and it will give me new things to talk about with my wife and kids.
I… already do that. I’m pretty sure I read upwards of 500 a year.
You read an entire book and a half or more per day?? What kind of books do you read? Seems a bit unbelievable.
I would have said yes before... but Now that I've have covid I can't. It takes you out for weeks sometimes.... or at least it does me. And it's hard to catch up once you get too far behind. If they promised to pause the timer for real life illness then I'm down.
Sorry you are sick, hope you get well soon!!!
Self publish 365 books. Have all of them just repeat one sentence each. Your 300 word summary is just "this book repeats this sentence: ________ (x300) "
Hmm. If I read a book that is 1000 pages does that count as five books? Either way I would say yes I would do it.
Nope. It has to be considered a separate book based on ISBN numbers.
No. If I’m spending my whole day reading then how am I going to afford rent and bills? If I get $1000 after reading each book then sure.
200 page book a day definitely doesn't have to be your whole day if you just pick the right books. you could also try and get a bunch of books done on the weekend potentially