I began keeping track of the books I read back in 2009. The following year, I created an Excel spreadsheet which tracked not only what books I read each day but also how many pages. I would occasionally miss a day or more of reading.

But today is the third anniversary of a streak where I have read at least at least one page in a book {but MANY more on most days} every day since 17 July 2010.

That’s 1096 days straight of book reading!  Of course I have a long way to go in order to match the streak set by this father-and-daughter duo.

In those three years, I have finished 245 books and read over 57,600 pages.

In 2010 and 2011 I finished over 100 books each year. However, this  took a distinct dip in 2012 as I completed barely 50. There were two major reasons for this.  First, I received my first eBook reader – an Amazon Kindle.  The books I began reading on that were usually much longer than the physical books I would typically buy. Also, the fact that I was no longer a reading teacher made a difference as I used to count the much shorter children’s books I would read with my students.

Note that I DO NOT count non-book reading in this record-keeping. If I kept track of all the articles I read online or in physical newspapers/magazines I wouldn’t have much time for anything else at all {work, for example}.

Although I do maintain my old spreadsheet on a daily basis, my recent switch to an Android-based tablet has caused me to discover several apps with which I can track my reading activities.

I quite like MyBookDroid which I can use as an inventory for books owned, read and wanted but it doesn’t tabulate the stats I have in the spreadsheet.

ReadTracker and ReadingLog both include timers which I can turn on and off when I start and finish reading my book{s} each day. The latter app tabulates total time spent reading each day/week/month while the former will estimate the time remaining to finish any given book based on book length and your average speed. Neither will give me a stat on accumulated pages read.

So, it looks like I may have to teach myself how to design the “perfect” reading app that combines all of the best tracking features into one package. If I learn programming and spend all my time designing apps, THEN when would I have time to read? Quite a conundrum…

Well, back to my book – I aim to finish Lawrence Block‘s Hit Me tonight (book #35 for 2013).