*** Does anyone know which Lawrence Block book was set in New Hope, PA?Thanks to Heath for the answer and I have downloaded it.
Reading TOLSTOY AND THE PURPLE CHAIR, about a woman who read a book a day for a year. She reads 70 pages an hour. A few years ago I read her website every day, but the book is much better. I hate to say it but the addition of her dead sister makes her more human. I never like Joyce Carol Oates more than in her period of grief in A Widow's Story. What does this say about me? Or Joan Didion in her book on the same.
Anyway, what I am wondering is, can you really absorb a book at that speed? Do you come away with the same experience that I get at perhaps half that? Maybe the speed is irrelevant. I don't know. You must be skipping over words. How do you know which ones to skip? Does you brain learn to filter out parts of speech?
Also: Is reading a book a day a good thing? Do you hone your skills, strengthen a muscle, or does it become mostly a race you have to finish? A chore, a duty, a bet won.
How fast can you read a book? Do the books you read quickly stay with you more or less than ones you savor? I know I am justifying my slow reading speed by these questions. But I need to look up and think about what I've read. Maybe it's different for others. Maybe you can think and read at the same time. I can't.
23 comments:
For me it depends entirely on the book. I could probably read a book a day if I could handle being on my ass that much. I can't. I'm content to read a book or two a week. If I travel, I read more, because there's no better way for me to pass time on planes and in airports than with my nose in a book.
Now that is also a consideration. I could never sit in that purple chair (even if it is metaphorical) that length of time.
If I do nothing else, I can read a book a day - at least 4-500 pages. For exciting thrillers I just rush through them, not minding if I miss detals or if I remember anything after two days. If I really love a well-written mystery, I feel myself slowing down when I can see the end is near, though, wanting to make them last forever and a day :)
Patti - As always, such an interesting question! I don't think that speed of reading is the only determinant of how much one absorbs. There's some interesting research, for instance, that suggests that we remember more (and longer) when what we read is about something we're already familiar with. So if, for instance, you're reading a book that's about your profession, or takes place in a city you know very well, or is about a sport you love, you'll remember it longer and better than you will a book that is about something totally alien to you.
That said, though, there are many, many other factors, too. There's motivation, there's writing style, there's level of fatigue while one's reading, and so on.
To get directly to your questions, I read quickly ('though not usually a book a day). But I don't think I absorb (in the end) much differently from friends of mine who savour their reading more slowly.
Now those studies make sense because the groundwork has been laid for your absorption of the subject. And you probably already have an interest in the subject.
That's what I've always thought, Patti.
I do read fairly quickly, but it depends on what I'm reading.
At one point in time I trained myself to speedread (it's not that hard) but I felt it was just helping me race through books without necessarily getting all I wanted out of it. (I must admit I used it to read some Henry James stories, and they could use a little speed!)
As mentioned, I have read more than a book a day. There was a week in 1976 when I read 19 books - granted, most of them were by Simenon and Erle Stanley Gardner, both of them writers of short, fast-moving books. For the month I read 41 books, all of them mysteries.
By the next year I had gotten involved in mystery fandom and was lucky to read 2-3 books a month. I haven't read 30 booka in a month since January of 1983.
But yes, I do skip words, though occasionally I miss something important (did he say she was black? how'd I miss that?) and have to go back.
As to the last question, it depends. Yes, if I like something I want to get back to it and tend to read faster, but some books I really like I want to go slowly (SHOGUN comes to mind).
You don't have to justify anything - read at your own pace and how you get the most out of a book. It's not a contest. To me the only dividing line is between readers and non-readers.
Jeff M.
I can (and have) read a book in a day if it really grips me, but I have no intention or ever reading a book a day as an average. I heard of this woman before (didn't she also write amazon reviews for all the books?), and my first thought was, "Why?" followed immediately by "What's the point?" The books have to run together at some point, at which time the enjoyment would, I think, have to dwindle.
Hey, whatever floats her boat. I prefer to let books take their own time to be read.
I used to read very quickly when I was younger, used to retain what I read much better. But now, it's all kaput. I only really remember books I've read several times or books having to do with something I especially know or love.
The rest of it is lost in a haze, I'm afraid. I read mystery fiction much quicker than just about anything else. Used to read three and four books a week. But not so much anymore.
Non-fiction can slow me down some and reading speed depends on my mood as well.
Great question, Patti.
I'm terribly slow as a reader. 20 pages an hour is about my top speed if I'm completely engrossed. And I can't read more than three or four hours at a time. A Lee Child novel can be read in a week. That said, I've read Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky and love Dickens and Trollope.
I write quickly though so I can write a book in less time than it would take for me to read some novels...
That's funny, Steven. I am even slower at that.
Yes, I am slower to Yvette, which raises the question where does it all end. I remember my mother saying old age has the benefit of being able to reread all the good books you had already read for the first time.
What I do have to justify is spending so much time here instead of there.
I much enjoy the actual process of reading and don't typically speed read materials. I do it with fiction when the book has essentially lost me and I don't find it very interesting but just need to know the basics of what happened. I don't think you absorb the material in the same way or as deeply but you can certainly get the gist.
I made some comments about this last week when George reviewed this book. While I believe it is possible to read a relatively-short book in one day, how can she possibly have read a book every single day for a year? Doesn't she have family, other obligations, chores, a job, unexpected emergencies, etc., that cut into normal reading time? The book sounded like a stunt--sort of like JULIE & JULIA--where someone decides to do something every day for a year, blog about it, and then turn that blog into a book.
She claimed she was able to read every book in less than four hours. She has four kids, I think. Obviously a stay at home Mom but still...
I'm not that fast, and I can't read for more than a couple of hours without a break. I think speed reading of the Evelyn Wood variety promises full comprehension, but I've never tried it. Occasionally I'll speed through purple prose because I'm not that interested in reading color--green trees, blues skies, red birds, etc. My record is 2 1/2 books in 4 hours, but they were Gunsmiths, which are short and easy to read.
My problem is one of distraction. I could never read that long unless I am in bed at night.
Evelyn Wood speedreading doesn't work on fiction with any subtext at all. Gardner's most dialog-heavy, breezier fiction, it Might work for.
All the speedreaders I know, when dealing with a work of any complexity at all, continually say "What's the point of this?" or "I'm totally confused."
As Fritz Leiber used to point out about himself, close paraphrase: "I like to read slowly, so I can find the poetry in the text."
As for the mourning texts being more attractive, that's a bit of a puzzler. Makes the writers more approachable, somehow?
I guess that's it. Especially with the Purple Chair book.
Deb, it was a "stunt" of sorts - according to the book it was also her way of taking time to deal with the sudden death of her older sister at 46. Her husband was obviously very understanding and her kids did cooperate.
Of course, for the most part she had to confine herself to shorter books.
Jeff M.
My reading speed varies by what I'm reading. If I'm reading Henry James's long, languid sentences, I'm going to read a lot slower than if I'm reading Hemingway's short, sharp sentences. And, of course, the plot can accelerate my reading if the suspense grips me.
Late as usual... I'm a slow reader, probably the slowest here so far, 40 pages in a good day, but I admit I self-interrupt a lot, stopping to stare off into space and think about a phrase, thought the text gave me, or just about the weather, chores, or something else.
I read about 75 books a year, given a lot of reading hours most days. I always hope to read two books a week - 104 a year, but have only achieved that goal once.
I once impressed my partner by reading an entire book on a flight home from California (3 1/2 hours), but it was published in 1908 and the type and margins in the book were similar to a kid's book. Large and lots of wasted space. It was probably the equivalent of an 80 page book by modern printing standards. I've really only managed to read a book in a single day on very rare occasions - usually when I'm horribly ill and have to stay at home. I do get up and move around though. Point well taken about being trapped in a chair or a couch or, in my case, in a sick man's bed. I can't read more than 40 pages in an hour though.
I haven't a clue how speed readers accomplish what they say they can and retain all the subtleties in fiction. Speed reading like what Todd mentioned is probably better for non-fiction - especially textbooks. I understand the concept and I've used it a few times way back in college, but I've never found it useful when I want to read a book I intend to enjoy. And now I can't remember any of the tricks to speed reading nor do I want to re-learn them.
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