Sandi Shilhanek | Get your Olympic medal in reading.

Over the last weeks the Olympics have been what quite a few of my friends have been discussing. Mostly they’re talking about Michael Phelps and his phenomenal performance in not only winning eight gold medals, but in the process also setting seven world records.

It has been about thirty-six years since Mark Spitz set the record that Michael Phelps has broken.

So all this hoopla that has so rightly surrounded this year’s Olympics has gotten me to thinking about how many books people are able to read in a year and how that might translate into an Olympic medal.

From my surfing around the net I have discovered that some people have amazing reading speed. eharlequin has challenged their members to read and blog one hundred thousand books this year and they will donate books to The National Center for Family Literacy.

Yes, I do my best to contribute to this worthy cause and post my books there, but so far this year I’ve only read or listened to eighty-one books, while one member has read five hundred eighty! She would surely be a contender for a gold medal. I on the other hand can only wish to be in that league, and would undoubtedly not win a medal at all, but might surprise myself with a bronze.

While I might not be able to compete against the world and win a medal I might be able to compete in my small circle of friends. Well, on second thought as I think about my closest reading friends I again think I don’t stand a chance for a medal, but that’s okay because what I am gaining by reading a book or listening to an audio is more important to me than earning a medal I’d have to dust.

I want to know are you a contender for an Olympic medal in reading? Do you have a circle of friends with whom you compete? What medal would you win if you were to compete with them? Are you like me, and while I do compete with a friend for who can read the most in a year it really doesn’t matter whether or not I’d win a medal because the fun is really in reading great things, and living vicariously through the stories that the authors have provided me with.

Sandi