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Man Who’s Read 200 Books This Year Counts Graphic Novels

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books, comic, graphic novels, manga, novels, reading

NEW YORK — Steven Lloyd, a man who has allegedly read 200 books this year, includes graphic novels in his loose definition of what constitutes a book, according to sources.

ā€œA couple hundred books a year isn’t even that much — anyone who’s impressed by that isn’t a real reader if you ask me,ā€ said Lloyd, lovingly arranging his collection of Suicide Squad trade paperbacks next to a stack of Love Hina mangas. ā€œReading is like breathing for me. I’m just a naturally curious person who loves experiencing different lives through the eyes of others. I honestly pity people who don’t read as much as I do. If you aren’t reading, you aren’t growing.ā€

Goodreads creator Otis Chandler said his website made book measuring contests much more common, giving readers a reason to stretch their numbers.

ā€œPeople walk up to me at parties and brag about how much they’ve read this year, but they forget that I can look up their reading lists,ā€ said Chandler. ā€œThe guy who reads 300 books a year has a few Grishams in there along with a Thor: Dark World movie tie-in comic and a 1991 Archie Double Digest as well as a horizontal rectangle book of Garfield comic strips with a green plastic cover. And, of course, none of the 300 books is non-fiction.ā€

Lloyd’s girlfriend Nancy Williams claimed she had never seen him read an actual book.

ā€œWhen he’s not reading comics, Steven mostly plays computer games, but he tells me they’re ā€˜visual novels’. He says he’s reading Telltale’s Batman right now. After that, he says he’s going to read Apex Legends,ā€ said Williams. ā€œOne time I caught him playing a dirty Japanese game and when I confronted him, he wasn’t embarrassed at all. He said he was reading an erotic tale and that it was his 103rd book of the year.ā€

At press time, Lloyd was seen bragging about his stock portfolio after putting all his money into GameStop.