How to Score Your Reading

Last year about this time, I read a post at BookRiot about keeping track of your reading data in a nifty spreadsheet. The author notes that some will think this tracking is a means to "make reading a competition," which she cleverly subverts by ridiculing the notion. Savvy readers can see through the subterfuge.  That's just what we say to make our friends think it isn't a competition, so they will slack off and give us an edge. Because if there's one thing we love more than literature around here, it's winning.

A moment's consideration will reveal, however, that this isn't a straightforward numbers game. It isn't enough to simply read a lot of books, after all. You have to read the correct books, the books people ought to read, as opposed to the ones you like and enjoy for their own sake. If reading for self improvement, there are plenty of listed recommendations out there, but which lists do we undertake? And what if you go off the rails and improvise a bit? We need a precise method for quantifying the excellence of a book, and how smug we are allowed to feel having read it. Therefore, I have developed a scoring system to help track not only the quantity, but the quality of your reading, moving into the new year.

The following is intended to serve strictly as a template for your own score sheet. Some readers will undoubtedly consider some criteria irrelevant, and recognize gaps in the system as well. Feel free to tailor the system to accurately reflect your personal reading values or, barring that, to justify your ill advised Grafton, Grisham, and/or Gaiman binge.
Ha Ha! Just kidding. Neil Gaiman is always a good idea.

To learn your reading score, collect the following data; number of books read in your chosen time frame, author, gender, genre, format, source, author's nationality, whiteness, and page count.

The following is a description of how to use the data to account for points, and a rationale as to how the system is designed.

NUMBER of BOOKS

If you read a book, congratulations! You get a point. Whether it's The Association of Small Bombs by Karan Mahajan or Captain America: Steve Rodgers (2016) #1 by Nick Spencer and Jesus Saiz, all literature has some value. Just, some has more than others.

AUTHOR

In our academic, pretentious opinion, the goal of reading is nothing so banal as to entertain. Rather, it is to acquire a diversity of perspective so that we can assert our superiority over other segments of society such as Rednecks, Kardashians, and People Who Do Not Listen to NPR. Therefore, add another whole point for every new author in the list. If you repeat an author, subtract 0.25 from that point for every subsequent appearance. The second book from the same author will count for 0.75, the third 0.5, and so on until the fifth book by the same author, at which point you are developing a restricted worldview, and are no longer permitted to award yourself an author point.

Note: be wary of pseudonyms.

GENDER

The world's population is approximately 50% female, but published literature is grossly over represented by males. This is especially true when viewed in historical perspective. Consequently, we have been overexposed to the male perspective (because there truly is only one male perspective). Therefore, you get no gender point if the author identifies as a cisgender male. A cis female author gets one point. Add another full point for every non traditional gender/sexual identity held by the author.

GENRE(S)

It is not only important to gather a diversity of authors, but also of genre. Some readers like to confine themselves to a certain subtype of books they enjoy, rather than challenging themselves with new styles, ideas, and boredoms. This system rewards readers for stepping out by allowing a full point for every new genre read in the allotted time frame. Since many books fall into multiple genres, be careful to account and add a point for each. For example, Joe Haldeman's The Forever War can be considered both Science Fiction and a Classic. It would be good for two additional points, provided the reader had not read from either of these genres earlier in the competition.

Exception

Any book considered "escapist" by a panel of your peers requires their genre points to be divided by half. Larry Correia's Monster Hunter International is both an urban fantasy and a thriller, but only receives one genre point due to its escapist nature.

FORMAT

Science says format matters. If you read the narrative in paper or hardback, give yourself a point. While convenient, you don't retain as much from an ebook, so that gets you a big, fat zero.

SOURCE

Source can be less of a scoring metric than a simple observation on where you get your books from. However, as an author I am particularly sensitive to the need to support the production of new literature through actual currency exchange, so award yourself a point of you own the title you just read. Add half a point for library reads, since this is supporting your civic community. You still get the other points for borrowed books, as I do appreciate the aversion of monetary risk on an unknown quantity. Even so, shame on you and me for not buying books.

Exception

If the author is dead or no longer receiving royalties, go ahead and award yourself the point anyway.

NATIONALITY

Once again, diversity of perspective is what motivates our scoring according to nationality. Add another point for every new nationality added to the list. Since we are assuming we are all reading in English, you may add yet another three points if the narrative was originally printed in a non English language. If you read two titles from Japan, as an example, the first reaps an additional four points for being a new nationality written in a foreign language. The second is not a new nationality so misses the first point, but retains the foreign language kicker. It should be noted that reading translated narratives from a diversity of nationalities is an extraordinarily efficient way to become better than your peers rack up points.

WHITENESS
As we all know, being white isn't necessarily bad per se, but since most of the literature out there has been written by white people, for diversity reasons it's just not exactly good. Thus, add another point if the author's epidermis is any color other than white.

PAGE COUNT

Page count is perhaps the most vital element of the scoring process, as it shuts down an easy exploit. One could theoretically dash through the library's entire collection of "The Babysitter's Club" paperbacks and artificially inflate their numbers, while their neighbor bravely slogs through David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest (on ebook because seriously? Who is going to lug that tome around for the better part of the three months it's going to take to read it?) and receives a fraction of the points. Page count is unfortunately a flawed solution as publishers can monkey with typeset and font size, manipulating the numbers like a college freshman taking English Comp 1, but unfortunately it's the best system we've got.

To score, place a decimal point behind the hundredth's place, and multiply the accumulated base score by that number. Thus, the 208 page The Vegetarian by Han King is multiplied by 2.08, and the 1216 page The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu gets you 12.16 times the points.

OPTIONAL ADDITIONS
For my own personal use, I like to add another variable. I believe it is important to support local authors, and review their work online in hopes that they will offer quid for my proverbial quo. Therefore, I add yet another point if I can consider the author local, or if they otherwise might notice my lips locked on their august posterior and reciprocate.

You may add or subtract criteria and scoring at your whim. Just make sure, when competing against fellow readers, that everyone's score is tallied using the same standard.

RUNNING THE TOTALS: AN EXAMPLE
My personalized scoring uses the following pattern.

The first book I read in 2016 was Demons of Cortanis by C.J. Weiland. It receives the original base point (1), and the full Author point (1), but Weiland is unfortunately male, so Demons gets no Gender points. The genre is Science Fiction which, being the first book of the year is of course new, so it gets a Genre point. I could perhaps justify it as a thriller as well and add another point, but let's keep it simple (1). I read it in paperback for the Format (1), and I bought the book for the Source point (1). Again, as the first book, the US counts as a New Nationality so we get to add (1), but Weiland is as white as a Trump rally so we get no Race points. He is, however, a Local Author so he gets an additional (1) for a total of (7). We multiply this by the 270 page count (2.7) and find this wonderful selection nets me 18.9 points.

The second book I read was Pawn by J.C. Ahern. It gets the base point (1), the full Author point (1), and since she's a she, we get a Gender point (1). We have a dual genre of YA and Fantasy, neither of which are Sci-Fi so I could add two, but it's also kind of escapist so it gets reduced back to (1). Again, I read it in an approved Format (1) and Own the title (1). However, since she is from the US like Weiland, Pawn does not net a New Nationality point and she's also white, so I am still missing the Race point. The Local Author point adds (1), also bringing the total up to (7). However, since the page count registers at a cool 396, I get to multiply by 3.96 for a total of 27.72 points.
Altogether, in 2016 I read 23 titles, scoring 323 points, rounded to the nearest whole number. That's an average of about 14 points per title. Whoo! I need to read more translated work!

I hope you can use this to help improve your own reading catalog in the future. Keep reading! Lord knows, in 2017 it'll be better than Facebook or watching the "news."