How long would it actually take to finish your TBR?

Hey Happy Bookworms!

This is an idea I’ve wanted to do for a long time! I have no clue how this is gonna go or how long this is gonna be and it might fail 😂 but let’s see! (and hope)

We’ve all looked at our TBRs and complained about how long and endless they are so today I try to answer the question of how long it would actually take to finish your TBR! (using lots of guess work but let’s ignore that)

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Main assumptions:

Okey dokey guys, so I’m gonna have to warn you that this post is going to use a lot of extreme generalisation because I ain’t about to sit here and tally up exactly how many pages are in each book/how big the font size is/if there are pictures/I could continue forever… Instead we are going to use a perfect world (that’s an actual thing that mathy people do) In which, we will assume:

•  Every book is 350 pages long

(I went through my TBR and rounded everything to the nearest 50 pages & this was the most common number)

•  You can read a page a minute

(I thought that small text books will be balanced out by graphic novels and big text books for this one so it’s probably closer as an average than you’d think)

My TBR (roughly):

Right! Now the fun bit MAAAATTTTTHHHH- just kidding! The solution to this pressing question (that we all must know right know, yet I am dragging it out to torment you 😈)

I have 284 books on my TBR list right now meaning 99,400 pages (284 x 350)
Meaning 99,400 minutes or 1657 hours (rounded to 4 s.f.) (99,400 ÷ 60)
Which is 69 (to 2 s.f.) days straight of reading (Ans ÷ 24)

……………………….BUT……………………….

Not even a true bookworm could do that 😱 So let’s make more assumptions!

• Each day you need (let’s be healthy) 8 hours of sleep
• 3 Hours to get ready/eat/all that other stuff humans need
• 9 Hours of school/work (I’m also including homework in this and commutes)
• 3 hours on weekends to live your life

(We’re pretending you can’t read while doing any of the above)

So that leaves us with just 4 hours on a weekday.
And 10 hours on a weekend day.
(We’re again pretending that you couldn’t possibly want to do anything else with your life because um….books are life)
Totalling: 20 hours of reading time a week

1657 hours (unrounded) ÷ 20 = 83 (to 2 s.f.) weeks
Assumption: a month is 4 weeks
83 (unrounded) ÷ 4 = 21 (to 2 s.f.) months
21 (unrounded) ÷ 12 = 1.7 (to 1 d.p.) years

Now we finally have my rough answer – it would take me 1.7 years (1 year and 8 months (12 x 0.7) so up until August) to finsih my TBR if I consistently read for 20 hours a week! Isn’t that great news?! 😭

Your TBR (extremely roughly):

I promise this section will be quick & to the point as you’ve already seen all the maths! (This is still using 20 hours of reading time a week and all the above assumptions)

If you have…on your TBR, it’ll take approximately…

• 100 books – 7 months (around 14 books a month so y’all better be over-achievers)
• 150 books – 11 months
• 200 books – 1.2 years
• 250 books – 1.5 years
• 300 books – 1.8 years
• 350 books – 2.1 years
• 400 books – 2.4 years

If you want a more personalised answer then GET YOUR CALCULATORS OUT!

TBR x 350 ÷ 57600

My more exact TBR:

I didn’t think this post would be this long but I went through all the work of rounding all my TBR to the nearest 50 (or more precise in some cases) so this is 100% staying in now.

The average is 365 (to 3 s.f.) pages per book – so I was atually so close on my assumption of 350 pages per book! *pat on the back for me*

Which is a page of each book every day & I’d finish the whole lot by next Christmas!

Anyway, that would put me at just a little bit longer with 1.8 years instead of 1.7, meaning 1 year and 10 months.

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Thank you so much for reading!

Was this cool? Did you like it? How long would it take you to finish your TBR?

Does anyone want to check my maths? Did I get it right? 😂

Images: Freepik by Sapann-Design & rawpixel