I Watch Too Much TV? No, I Don't Read Enough Books

Watching too much TV is not the problem. The problem is not enough reading.

I looked back at the books I’ve read this year and nearly cried. I think my number is around five. Granted, one of them is the Omnivore’s Dilemma, which is a thick book, but five books in year is just pathetic.

I then thought, how much time do I spend watching TV? Well, I watch about 18 shows, and if we assume each show has 15 episodes, that’s about 225 hours a year (some shows are 30 minutes and some are 1 hour). Accounting for fast forwarding through commercials and the mindless surfing, I would estimate I watch at the very least 300 hours of TV a year.

How much time do I spend reading books? If I hit 30 hours this year, I would be very impressed (work doesn’t count).

Let’s think of this another way, I spend about $60 a month on my HD DVR with the HD stations. That’s about $720 a year on TV.

Including the six magazines I subscribe to, I spent about $150 on reading material. $150 v. $720? Sad.

So here’s what I want to do: for every TV show I watch, I want to read one book. To be massively generous, I’m going count shows and not episodes. So the entire fifth season of Lost (all 22 episodes) can be offset by one book.

Moreover, I’m going to count each magazine subscription as a book too. So 12 issues of Maxim will also count as one book.

According to this method, in 2008, I “read” eleven “books” (and I use that term loosely) and watched 18 TV shows. All I need is to read seven more books and I’m good.

I don’t think this is a lot to ask. For people who aren’t regular book readers, I think this is a reasonable goal.

For a list of book I recommend click here.