Have read/have been reading

Neither sentence seems very good to me. Are you trying to ask about the length of time that the other person takes to read books, or are you trying to ask something more like "How many books have you read in the last year?"

I think how many books have you been reading for a year because there is a time period/duration in the questions like for a year. You can also say how many books have you been reading since last year.

To GPY:

The latter. I am asking about the number of books read, not the length of time spent reading books.

To all:

1. If both "How many books have you read in the last year?" and "How many books have you been reading since last year?" are right, my thought-- the former means only how many books have been read in the last year while the latter

1. "How many books have you been reading since last year?" is not something that I would say. I don't find the reason for the choice of tense clear.

2. You mean can you ask "How many books have you read for the last year?" As in your original sentences, it sounds as if you are talking about length of time that the other person has taken to read the books, but it is not a good sente

lucas21c"How many books have you read for a year?"

The tense is correct, but the preposition is wrong: "in a year" or "this year" would be OK. On the other hand, if you refer to the last/finished year, you should use past simple: "How many books did you read last year/throughout the year?"

lucas21c"How many books have you been reading f