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piranhasomebody posted about having read >75 books this year, and the *poing* generally tries to shoot for 100. i used to be right in that range, 90-110 a year. it's been dropping (fucking depression), but a couple of years ago it was still over 50.
this is the first year in my active memory that i've not read at the very least 50 books. that realization felt weird. depressing. i was headed down slump road, when i had to hit myself over the head. hard.
because i have read so much manga that i don't even know how much manga i've read. and since most of it is in electronic format, i can't just count shelf space (though that's been growing quite nicely as well), or go back to my log (since i started it, but didn't keep it up). the reading of it also feels different, and i don't have kinesthetic memory of picking up books, looking at covers, and turning pages to help the subconscious keep track.
statistics to the rescue. having a well-organized filesystem helps. i counted the files, or rather, let unix count them (find . -type f | grep -v DS_Store | wc -l): 25160. most of those are individual chapters, the average chapter has about 31 pages. that's 780,208 pages, which, at roughly 200 pages a manga comes to ~3900 volumes (*eyes bug out*). now, i have not read them all; there are a fair number of raws (~1500 found with another grep) and while i've paged through most of those, "read" isn't the word i'd use for that. but i _have_ read almost all of the remaining ~2300. ergo it appears that i have read about 6 entire manga every day, for the last 11 months (the obsession started with hikaru no go and it is all![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bookshop's fault).
OMG. that is insane. no wonder i am a wandering BL encyclopedia. and completely no surprise now that i've hardly read any regular books during this past year. i mean, i knew i was reading a lot of manga, but ...
this is the first year in my active memory that i've not read at the very least 50 books. that realization felt weird. depressing. i was headed down slump road, when i had to hit myself over the head. hard.
because i have read so much manga that i don't even know how much manga i've read. and since most of it is in electronic format, i can't just count shelf space (though that's been growing quite nicely as well), or go back to my log (since i started it, but didn't keep it up). the reading of it also feels different, and i don't have kinesthetic memory of picking up books, looking at covers, and turning pages to help the subconscious keep track.
statistics to the rescue. having a well-organized filesystem helps. i counted the files, or rather, let unix count them (find . -type f | grep -v DS_Store | wc -l): 25160. most of those are individual chapters, the average chapter has about 31 pages. that's 780,208 pages, which, at roughly 200 pages a manga comes to ~3900 volumes (*eyes bug out*). now, i have not read them all; there are a fair number of raws (~1500 found with another grep) and while i've paged through most of those, "read" isn't the word i'd use for that. but i _have_ read almost all of the remaining ~2300. ergo it appears that i have read about 6 entire manga every day, for the last 11 months (the obsession started with hikaru no go and it is all
bookshop's fault).OMG. that is insane. no wonder i am a wandering BL encyclopedia. and completely no surprise now that i've hardly read any regular books during this past year. i mean, i knew i was reading a lot of manga, but ...
Hello pleo!
on 2007-11-22 10:38 (UTC)Re: Hello pleo!
on 2007-11-22 18:24 (UTC)i wouldn't be surprised if you doubted that 2300 manga number; i doubted it myself. i went over it with the paramour to see whether i made any errors, but no, i didn't.
i used to have amazing retention, but that went out the window with the depression; it fucks up my short-term memory transfer. i'm happy if i remember anything i read these days, but that has nothing to do with how much i read; even if i read just one book my memory of it would suck. i only remember small bits and pieces. when you ask a question over on manga-luve, i don't just go "oh right, that's X", i go "oh, i've read that, yeah" and then i try to recall what the art looked like (for which i have a reasonably decent memory albeit sort of vague, but it matches with how i remember mangaka artstyles), and when i think i know the mangaka i go into that filefolder and stare at the titles to see whether anything rings a bell. sometimes it doesn't, and i have to think whether i remember anything more, like was it short or long, or do i even remember a character name or something else significant. sometimes i google for what i do remember. and in the end, often i have to look at several manga to find the correct one. if i don't even remember the mangaka's artstyle it's much more hopeless. but in any case it's very rarely an immediate thing.
that's why i am building a database. it will make finding things much faster.
thanks for the compliment! it dates back from a time when i was playing a lot with photoshop.
when i think about how you talk about your reading, it sounds to me like you'd be reading more than 15 books as well though. i bet you're not counting all the manga you read digitally either. :)
Babbling....sorry!
on 2007-11-22 21:36 (UTC)Hehe, no way I'm doubting your 2300 mangas...I understand focused obsession of the newby kind. Especially, when there is many sources related with the newby's new interest, then he/she/it feels obliged to cover all of them as soon as possible...personal experience...
I remember my first years of discovering fanfiction...I went through many gigas of stories...
Nice times, I had,almost, lost any touch with real world!
The difficult thing, I believe, is keeping your passion alive...I'm 5 months old in yaoi mangas and if I kept pacing my reading like I did the first 2 months then probably it would result to terrifying numbers, close to that of your case...or not because they're too terrifying!
Unfortunately (or not), I don't feel the need to read so much now...I don't know why...
Re: Babbling....sorry!
on 2007-11-23 00:16 (UTC)yeah, i am actually surprised i am sticking with the BL for as long as i have; that usually indicates a lasting passion for me (such as i have for SF and mysteries, which i've read voraciously for decades). my obsessions usually pass more quickly; after 3-5 months i am done with them. the only reason why i am slowing down is that i've pretty much read most of the good stuff that's been scanlated and am now just keeping up with new releases. and my japanese isn't good enough yet to tackle original stuff for any actual length (i can translate a oneshot for myself, but it is very laborious and feels more like work than like relaxed reading to just enjoy it).
but if my interest runs out, well, then it runs out. i don't worry much about that. there are so many cool things to explore in the world, i can never even get to all the ones i'm somewhat interested in already, nevermind about the ones i don't even realize right now that some day i'll go ga-ga over.
glad you like the background! i like it too -- though i didn't paint it, it was an algorithmic experiment. i don't know whether i wrote down how i did it (for a while there i was just randomly playing around and can't reproduce the results). i had a whole series in this vein, wonder whether i ever uploaded them... *goes to check* ... nope. i should do that.
but first i need to stack the firewood which FINALLY came today.