I start to get a Kindle book every now and then and find that it is free if I am a member of Amazon Prime. I am, so I usually accept the book temporarily, much like borrowing a book from a library. Amazon only allows ten free books at a time. Their computers helpfully list the ten I already have when I want an eleventh and give me a chance to return any one I have. They list the price of the book in case I want to purchase it for keeps.
Until today, I had never tried to get a listing of the borrowed books I currently have on the computer, which is more powerful and flexible than a Kindle reader. The helpful list is only available on the Kindle reader itself temporarily. While exploring the options for the computer list of the books I have purchased, I learned that there is a filter for books in my archive I have read. I know the total number from several different displays but I hadn't seen a filter for books that I have read.
I have been estimating that I have read, by my definition of reading, about 200 of the several thousand I own. The filters said that I had read about 400 books. I set the filters and looked at the titles. I estimate that more than half of the books were ones I had not read. The book "Everybody Lies" uses one method of estimating how often people "finish" a book and how much of a book is typically read. I have wondered how much pressure is put on writers to make their books longer. "Lies" says most people are going to read the first 50 pages, pick up a few points and get on with their lives. My daughter has a practice of giving a book 50 pages of trial and dropping it if by then, it isn't what she wants. Emily Todd VanDerWurff wrote recently that TV dramas are in such demand that the industry has started dragging out inferior stories just to have something to show. I wonder if books, fiction and non-fiction, are going through something like that.
