"Life's too short to read five novels a week"

From "Life's too short to read five novels a week," a few interesting points--

"Then we come to a question that cannot be ducked: are there really 10,000 novels worth reading? Surely it is not essential to read every word an author wrote, and in the case of some well-known writers, one may not want to read anything at all. At some point, personal taste must come into it."

I disagree. I imagine there are 10,000 novels worth reading. Every time I'm foolish enough to start thinking I'm somewhat well read, I'll run across authors and novels that I've never even heard of. (I can only imagine how many hundreds exist that I still haven't heard of, much less read!) So I think the reading supply is definitely plentiful (no matter what your personal taste), and much of it is, if not essential reading, at least good enough to merit a single read-through.

"What a relief it was, last year, to learn of Milan Kundera's opinion that he based his reading on the premise that he got through books at the rate of 20 pages an hour. How the Society of Slow Readers enjoyed that confession"

I think that is reassuring! I happen to be a pretty fast reader, but I read much slower when I'm reading for leisure because there's an element of really savoring the text, as opposed to merely comprehending it.

But five novels a week, every week? Yeah--I'm not anywhere near that.