My Book Log is not about how many books you own or how many books you buy.

It’s about how many books you actually READ.

Think about this: Most best-selling books may not actually be the best-read books. Just because somebody buys a book doesn’t mean he or she reads it.

Full bookshelves and an empty mind are not the goal.

That’s why My Book Log encourages you, more than anything else, to track and review the books you read. It’s a tool for recording the literary landscape you’ve traveled… and the vistas stretched out before you.

What’s more, because My Book Log tracks how many books you read in a year, it’s also a tool to motivate you to read more.

Have you only read four or five books in the past year? Do you think you can double your pace and read 10 this year?

My Book Log can help you achieve that.

Have you experienced a major life interruption (like a newborn baby), and you fear you won’t be able to read as much as you used to?

Then use My Book Log to help you track your pace — and maintain it. Ultimately, it is a game you play against yourself or among friends.

How many books can you read?

-Ryan M. Healy

Technorati Tags: book logs, literacy, mission, Purpose, Reading

I’ve always loved to read. I read anytime I get the chance. When I was a boy in school I went to the school library and checked out book after book and spent time in the library reading. At lunch I would hang out with other friends who also liked to read and we would talk about the latest thing we were learning in our books…usually UFO conspiracies and fun stuff like that.

When I get a really fun book that grabs me and I can’t put it down…I don’t. I will drop everything else and read all day long and long into the night to finish it. That is rare though. It happens with Terry Pratchett novels but rarely does it happen with a self-help or business book. Of course occasionally I’ll also read in bed before I go to sleep but that isn’t a habit, it is just hit-and-miss.

No, the habit I’ve cultivated over the last couple of decades is to make sure I take a book with me when I go out for lunch.

I love…simply LOVE…sitting in a restaurant alone, eating great food, especially Chinese food, and reading for an hour or two in the early afternoon. That’s the luxury of having had a salaried job. I was able to take whatever time I wanted for lunch. I guess usually I don’t spend much more than an hour away because I always made my own jokes about my long lunches (before someone else could get a shot in) and one of my co-workers told me it really didn’t seem like I was abusing it. Maybe I just wasn’t missed!

Another thought I’ve always had about my lunch reading habit is what I call “the true cost of reading a book.” Before I got my Kindle I would tuck away each receipt for lunch in the book I was reading at the time. If the book has a lot of pages or if it didn’t really captivate my attention and it took more sittings than normal it could really accumulate quite a few receipts! So I would calculate the cost of the book plus the cost of each of the meals I ate while reading it and that is what it would truly cost me to read that particular book. You’ve got to see those hidden costs.

But even with the “high cost” they have been worth every penny. I look forward to exploring new worlds at the dinner table each day.

With just this amount of time devoted to reading I’ve been able to stack up quite a bit of book logs. I wish I had started this site much sooner to have kept track of everything I’ve ever read.

Recently I quit my job and have started doing web development full time. I never took time out to eat breakfast before but now I am making time to start the day right, and that includes some reading time at my kitchen table in the morning. I’m eating more lunches at home but I’m still reading while I do. We’ll see if this double exposure makes my book logs increase at twice the speed as well!

When and where is your favorite time and place to read?

Technorati Tags: book logs, reading at lunch, the true cost of books, time spent