It seemed like whenever I went on bookish social media in 2023, one of the first things that came up on my feed was related to a reading total. Now I don’t mind finding out how many people reached their goals at the end of the year, but it more often than not wasn’t about that. It was about who is winning the “reading” race.

I have seen so many people either be discouraged because their reading goal isn’t over one book a week or that they only manages 26 compared to people who read over 100. On top of that, we have the ridiculous debate surrounding what counts as reading. Yes, you read that right. What counts as reading. Nowadays, the only way you can say you’ve read the book is if you’ve literally read it, no ebooks or audiobooks allowed.

Making reading into a competition feels like more like entitled ableist rhetoric than a friendly test among a community. Audiobooks are not only a great way to read on the go, but they make the process of reading easier for those with dyslexia, ADHD, and those who are “slow readers”. Not only is it making reading more inclusive but it’s also giving people the opportunity to enjoy something in a different way. Ebooks are a similar situation; portable and great for saving space, Ebooks allow readers to download their books into one library and store thousands of titles in one place and you can adjust the font size for easier reading, again making it a more accessible and user-friendly mode of reading than the traditional print format. Yes, there are large print books available for readers who need a larger font size, but they often come in a larger book size and make it harder to carry around and travel with.

To shame people who use these methods to reach their reading goal is to not only be unsympathetic to their struggles as readers, but it also gives an air of superiority that often stales the experience of reading for others. It takes so much of the joy out of reading. No wonder people are getting sick and tired of being on bookish social media. My 160 reads of last year are contested on the basis that I read 40 volumes of a manga. Even when I reduce it down to 120 for the sake of the argument, it’s not like I enjoyed all of those 120 reads. In fact, I vividly recall having a nightmare of a time reading books between September and October because I forced myself to take up a book-a-day post schedule for October. Within those two months alone, I read roughly 40 books and I spent most of that time either reading books I didn’t connect with for the sake of meeting a deadline or stacking books up on a DNF pile after 100 pages and moving onto the next read because it just wasn’t keeping my interest. I was more proud to hearing my sister-in-law read 10 books last year outside of her reading-heavy job than to report what my total was.

It’s funny that there’s no announcements when it comes to how many books you’ve DNFed in a year – that I would love to see more than the often warped stats of an end of year reading tally. In fact, you might see my DNF list at the end of the year alongside my December reading summary. I hope the reading race stays in the past but I won’t bet on it, it seems that it’s already up for discussion and rearing its ugly head again. I don’t mind a good conversation about putting it to rest, but it often creates petty arguments or outright fights they come to no amicable conclusion.