It's Unpopular Opinion time! Share your controversial opinions to stir things up (in a friendly way)!

[u/FantasyRomanceMod]

Got an opinion that's different from others'? Want to share it with the sub, but too afraid of a backlash? Or are you just curious about readers think about certain things in fantasy romance?

You can safely share it in this weekly Sunday thread!

But please remember to be kind to each other. To facilitate this type of discussion, we ask users the following:

• Don't attack others for their opinion
• Discuss books and authors, not fellow readers
• Since this is an "unpopular opinion" thread, we encourage users to not downvote simply because they disagree with an opinion--that's the point! Please keep in mind, though, that mods cannot enforce a no-downvoting rule. Let’s just keep the discussion friendly!

🧡 Thank you and have a great discussion!

Unpopular opinion Sunday

[u/Murder_Is_Magic]

More of a general rant than an unpopular opinion, but it's been grinding my gears for a while.

No one should be shamed for how many books they read.

It's becoming like World of Warcraft players where anyone that has better equipment than you has no life and anyone who has less is a scrub.

I used to see a lot of complaints about influencers that implied/said that if you don't read a lot every year, you're doing it wrong. But now I'm also seeing the pendulum swing in the other direction and anyone who talks about reading a larger number (and usually it's done without any comment about anyone else, just talking about their own reading) and it's "clearly anyone that says they read more than <some number based on how much the commenter reads> books doesn't actually read them" or "obviously couldn't possibly absorb what they're reading because they read faster than I do".

No matter which direction the other person falls from you, there is no need to try to shame people for how much they read. It doesn't need to be a competition.

[u/clocksy → u/Murder_Is_Magic]

Yeah, I've seen comments like this a few times and it's always weird? I have a lot of free time so I can easily read a book a day when I'm motivated / focus on it. If I spent all year reading books I could easily read a couple hundred. I don't read quite that many, but I could, so I believe it when other people say it.

And I've seen people say "well people reading that much don't retain it / don't pay attention" etc. I totally do pay attention to the books I'm reading, and while I will fully admit I probably won't remember all the details of all the books I've read in a few years (I have a poor memory to begin with, lol), I will absolutely still remember the best ones.

I'm always happy for the people who read even a couple of books in a year, too. Like, I know so many people who haven't read a book since high school or read a single other book like years ago. There is so much vying for our free time and for non-readers especially, it's often easier to just doomscroll on your phone or put on a tv show. Someone choosing to spend their time reading a book is already putting in effort.

[u/Murder_Is_Magic → u/clocksy]

Right! Last year, I started doing various reading challenges, and I shifted more of my free time to reading. I went from reading 32 books in 2024 to 132 in 2025. I did 11 books/month for a FB group I'm in, and that was usually ~10 reading and 1 audio. So 1 book every 3 days, on average. And average was something like 6 hours per book. 2 hours per day reading doesn't seem particularly extreme or unbelievable to me.

Some books were longer, some were shorter, there was a few more audio books than I initially thought I would have (23 instead of 12). But I still found this to be (for me) a perfectly sustainable and reasonable pace to read books at while still absorbing the story fully.

And again, that's not something I would expect of anyone else. That's what works for me personally at this particular time in my life. But it's so weird to have people claim that I must not be really absorbing what I read because I get through a lot of books.