99.9% is about right, though for most people it's all but certainly generous to the books.
There are ~40 -- 150 million books published in total.[1]
Your reading lifetime is roughly 4000 weeks.[2] Figure how many books you read per week, and you've got a sense of how what you might be able to read fits into the total.
Using the lower bound of 40 million books:
- 4000 / 40 million is 0.01%. Which would put 99.99% of all books being not worth reading. Note that most people don't read a book a week.
- Tyler Cowan's 5 books a day works out to 140,000 in our 4,000 week lifetime, or 0.35%. That leaves 99.65% of all books not worth reading. I suspect this is an ambitious pace.
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Notes:
1. US Library of Congress catalogues about 40 million individual titles. Google estimated some years back that about 140 million books had ever been published.
2. 4,000 weeks is 76 years, 7 months, and 28 days. If you begin reading seriously at about age 10, that gets you to age 85. Give or take.
There are ~40 -- 150 million books published in total.[1]
Your reading lifetime is roughly 4000 weeks.[2] Figure how many books you read per week, and you've got a sense of how what you might be able to read fits into the total.
Using the lower bound of 40 million books:
- 4000 / 40 million is 0.01%. Which would put 99.99% of all books being not worth reading. Note that most people don't read a book a week.
- Tyler Cowan's 5 books a day works out to 140,000 in our 4,000 week lifetime, or 0.35%. That leaves 99.65% of all books not worth reading. I suspect this is an ambitious pace.
________________________________
Notes:
1. US Library of Congress catalogues about 40 million individual titles. Google estimated some years back that about 140 million books had ever been published.
2. 4,000 weeks is 76 years, 7 months, and 28 days. If you begin reading seriously at about age 10, that gets you to age 85. Give or take.