Wow, 366 books in a year?

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2012/12/new_year_s_resolutions_reading_a_book_every_day.single.html 

A Slate article posted earlier this week by Jeff Ryan describes his experiences carrying out a 2012 New Year's resolution: reading a book a day for the entire year. I was totally impressed when Nina Sankovich successfully completed the same project a few years ago, and I loved the book she later wrote about it, Tolstoy and the Purple Chair.

Unlike Nina, who took the year off from paid employment (though she still had kids at home), Jeff somehow sandwiched all of his reading in between a full-time job and his family responsibilities.

Jeff happily admits that he read lots of literary junk food over the course of the year. He revealed his secret: "capes. Superheroes have saved me so many times I might as well be Lois Lane. I can start and finish a six-issue collection of Captain America or Green Lantern comics in less than an hour. That's a book, or at least it is under my definition of 'something printed that costs about $20.' Don't blame me, blame Marvel Comics."

But even setting aside the books that he clearly just read for fun (and there is nothing wrong with that!), he found the time to tackle some really substantive material too. His reading list included Umberto Eco, Sarah Vowell, Nick Hornby, James Baldwin, Jonathan Letham, Tracy Kidder, Ray Bradbury, Michael Chabon, Virginia Woolf, Katherine Boo, Gore Vidal, and Don DeLillo. He even read Tolstoy and the Purple Chair. Not too shabby!

While I admire both of these readers for completing a challenge requiring so much focus and endurance, I can't envision doing anything similar myself. I'd resent the pressure to shy away from longer books, and occasionally I do like to do something other than read.

But what I love and ultimately find so inspiring about both of their stories is the reminder that we all have a lot more free time than we think we do. We just need to harness it more effectively. Jeff fulfilled his resolution using what he called "the crumbs of time found in [his] life," reading during his lunch hours, listening to audio books while mowing the lawn, deciding it wasn't that important to take the car in for yet another oil change. If he and Nina can find enough time to read a book each day, surely with a little effort I can better manage my own time and open up more room to read too.