I have this friend. Call her Patti.

Patti reads a lot of books. She reads a lot of other stuff, too, including newspapers.

In the closing days of last year Patti read a column in a newspaper in which the columnist wrote how he and others in his family play a game of counting the number of pages of books that they read in the year. The columnist went on to invite his readers to play the game, and count the number of pages of books they read in the coming New Year.

Patti accepted the invitation.

Without any change in her usual pace, by the 23rd day of January Patti had read 2,183 pages of books.
This is an average of 725 pages per week, which means (barring minor tragedies such as sitting on her reading glasses), by year's end Patti will have read over 37,000 pages of books.

That impresses me. No, that amazes me.

Yet Patty has developed a new sense of guilt over her reading. Confronted with this large and steadily increasing number, this tally of pages read, and implicity, of time spent reading, Patti is now convinced that she has no "real" life. She is, in her own words, "a slutty, promiscuous" reader.

Patti now suspects that her reading is some kind of obsessive-compulsive behavior.

I have a suspicion, too. I suspect Patti may have temporarily forgotten why she reads: she enjoys it. No, she loves it. Reading enriches her experience of life. Were reading illegal, Patti would be in jail. (And, jail security being what it is, she would probably have books, lots of books, smuggled in to her.)

I'm no pyschologist, but in my view, Patti's reading isn't obsessive. It’s her counting of the pages she has read that is obsessive.

This reminds me of a mutual friend of Patty's and mine. Call her Liz. Liz would count the steps she walked. She would count the steps from the kitchen to the living room, from her English class to her History class, from her car to the waiting room of the pyschologist to whom she would confess her secret of counting every step she took.

My point: walking wasn't the obsession; counting was.

Not until Patty began counting the pages she read did I ever hear her confess to feelings of guilt and worthlessness for being an… athletic reader.

My unasked for advice to Patti, and to everyone who loves to read: Read on.

Leave the counting to the Accountants. Next to shredding, it's what they do best.

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