How many books can you read in a year? 5? 10? 15? How about 200? That is the target that Claire Diaz-Ortiz has set for herself in 2013. Claire is the Manager, Social Innovation at Twitter. She is a regular contributor to the LinkedIn Influencers section and in the series “What Inspires Me?”, she had mentioned that she is inspired by books. And that where she also mentions about her goal of reading 200 books this year. She claims that she has been reading more than 100 books every year for the past few years and had gone past 150 books in 2012.

How easy is it to read 200 books in a year? This number translates to approximately 16 books a month or 4 books a week. Even if one reads so many books every week, is it possible to retain the gist of each book? I do not know. Only Claire can answer that.

Claire’s obsession with reading books reminds me of Seth Godin’s obsession with writing. He has been blogging almost daily for the past 12 years and recently completed  his 5000th blog post. His landmark 5000th blog inspired me to resume my writing and I had set a target of writing every day. I have not come anywhere close to that, but the journey has begun.

Coming back to writing, when I try to recollect how many books I have read this year, I can count about 12-15 books in 7 months. I could read a maximum of 10 books in the next 5 months. That will still be only about 25 books in 2013, which is a far cry from what Claire has been achieving consistently over the past few years. Should I even try to read so many books? Perhaps not.