People have been writing and singing and barding for centuries, nay, millenia. They have been painting and carving and fucking for longer.

Let's assume you're well-read.

There are still going to be SHITloads of things you haven't read.

I posit that you are looking at this the wrong way. Books - novels, poems, plays, what-have-you - are not to be seen as, say, money to earn, promotions to deserve, degrees to achieve. Reading a book is not an accomplishment. Reading is an experience.

The concept of a "well-read" person is relative at best. It is not absolute - it cannot be. No one is truly well-read.

I suggest that you have certain things that people whom you consider well-read do not. They have discovered certain books, you have not. This leaves open the possibility that you will discover and experience those books - in some senses, you have several adventures to choose from.

To my mind, this is the problem with things like book challenges. They reduce the reading experience to notches on your bookshelf. How many books have you read this year? This is outrageous, appalling even.

Do not count what you read! Read what you read. Enjoy what you read if it something worth enjoying. Be annoyed when it does not capture you, make you think, make you feel, make you sense something that you find yourself wanting to be open to, or better yet, if you find yourself open to these whether you want to or not.

And - I am being brutally frank here - reading is lovely and expands your mind and all that bullshit, but I can promise you, there are people out there who don't read for pleasure, who might not even read the newspaper because they watch the telly instead. People who live in the world outside the written world who live, experience, think, feel and sense just as people who read do. They are as complete, and as accomplished and experienced and fulfilled, as any reader, writer, artist you might know.

(We glamourise the artist - of any sort, why not? - because we prioritise the inner eye. But the life without glamour is not necessarily less.)

To sum up: Books are not trophies. Compare them instead to relationships - the idea isn't to have as many as possible. The idea is to experience your life to the fullest with the funds of time that you have. There is no need to collect the written word. Give books - of all sorts - the time you want to give them, the time you have to give them. The time you don't, you give to other things, and live there instead for a while.

To sum up even further: It doesn't matter how big it is, it matters how you use it.

[edited the last sentence]