from Shelf Awareness newsletter
If setting a good example will increase the number of readers in the U.S., then Amanda Patchin, owner of Veritas Fine Books, Garden City, Idaho, is setting an example extraordinaire. Her goal is to read 200 books–79,349 pages–this year.
The marathon read is Patchin’s response to the bad news about reading habits as summed up in last year’s NEA report, “To Read or Not To Read: A Question of National Consequence.” One of the findings was that young Americans spend an average of only seven minutes a day reading for pleasure.
According to the Idaho Statesman, Patchin, 27, “has obviously not participated in those studies. . . . [She] has read about 10,000 pages since Jan. 1. That’s more than 200 pages a day.”
You can learn more about her quest at 200books.com, where she sums it up this way: “200 books in 2008. Selected from Everyman’s Library. Reading while caring for a toddler and a new baby and running a small business. With daily blog posts chronicling the attempt. Yeah, I’m nuts.”