Do you like to read? Do you think of yourself as an accomplished reader? Some people haven’t read a book in a year, while others are reading two or three books at once. How many books should you read if you want to improve your general knowledge of the world?
The number of books you should read in a year to improve your general knowledge is determined by several factors, including your reading speed, the complexity of the books, your prior knowledge, and the amount of time you have available to read.
As a general rule, reading one book per month is a good place to start for most people. This equates to reading 12 books in a year. You can, however, aim to read more books if you have more time and can read faster.
It’s also critical to select books that are relevant to your interests and will broaden your knowledge in areas where you want to learn more. Reading widely in a variety of subjects can also help you broaden your general knowledge.
Remember that it’s not just about how many books you read; it’s also about the quality of your reading and how much you remember from what you’ve read. Take your time, read carefully, and think about what you’ve learned from each book.

How Fast Do You Read?

Would you like to calculate the number of books you can read in a specific period of time? You can use the following straightforward formula to estimate your reading speed and the number of books you can finish in a given period of time:

• Choose a book that you haven’t read before and that has a known word count. You can usually find this information on the back cover or on the publisher’s website.
  
  
• Set a timer for 10 minutes and start reading the book at your normal pace. Try not to speed up or slow down too much, as this will affect the accuracy of your results.
  
  
• When the timer goes off, stop reading and make note of the page number you reached. Count the number of words on that page and divide it by the number of minutes you read for. This will give you your reading speed in words per minute (wpm).
  
  
• To determine how many books you can finish in a given amount of time, multiply your reading speed in wpm by the total number of minutes you plan to devote to reading during that time period. Then, divide this number by the average word count of the books you plan to read. This will give you the approximate number of books you can finish.

Here’s an example:
Let’s say you read for 30 minutes and reach page 25 of a book with 300 pages and an average of 250 words per page. You count 200 words on that page.
Your reading speed = 200 words / 10 minutes = 20 wpm.
If you plan to read for 10 hours (600 minutes) in the next week, you can estimate how many books you can finish by using the formula:
Books = (Reading speed x Total minutes) / Average word count
Books = (20 wpm x 600 minutes) / 75,000 words (average word count of a 300-page book with 250 words per page)
Books = 0.16 or about 1 book
Therefore, you can expect to finish about one book in the next week if you read for 10 hours at a speed of 20 wpm.
Try this formula across a variety of reading material, easy books, magazine articles, text books, etc. That will give you a better overall idea on your average reading speed.

Making reading a top priority will allow you to accomplished your goal of reading a set number of books per year. Finding just one hour per day to read will go a long way towards that goal. Set a goal, block off some time and start reading!