Book Reviews: You mean I'm supposed to keep track?

I have begun to blog with more regularity now and find that I gravitate towards discussing the literary versus the personal. In order to make my blog more relevant, interesting or search friendly I've been checking out the whole blog phenomena a bit more aggressively. I was shocked to find five out of eight book oriented blogs visited in the past thirty minutes are keeping track of the number of books they read during a year.

We're supposed to keep track? Urgh. Um, gee, I wonder if my library will give me a print out. Plus, there's the whole sticky "do re-reads count toward the total?" What about Young Adult literature? Maybe they only count for half, except for Potter of course which should count for three, except of course I read it in about six hours so maybe not.

In addition to such quandaries as the ones listed previously, there is the fact that shouting out what number you are on is just plain tacky in my book. Not only are you declaring your reading superiority, you are also making yourself seem foolish. If you are reading to meet some arbitrary goal, are you reading the book for the book's sake? Of the blogs I saw, 50 seems to be the magic number. Why is fifty better than 25, or 75. If a person only reads ONE book in a year and it's a great book and it changes their life, then in the long run that is going to matter more than someone who chugged through a bunch for the wrong reasons.

This is one blogger game I won't be playing. My book reviews will have to speak for themselves, and the curious can do the math if they really want to know numerical counts. Be warned though, that it won't be accurate since not every novel I read makes the cut. I can at least guarantee that anything listed here was read for no other reason than it looked like a good book.