Patricia Abbott (pattinase): Reading Pace

Wednesday, June 22, 2016

Reading Pace

I am ashamed of myself. In the late eighties, just before I returned to work, I kept a diary of what I read. Here is one stretch

10/2-Final Harbor, David Martin; 10/ 3 The Object of My Affection, Stephen Maccauley; 10/5 Families and Survivors, Alice Adams; 10/9 A Family Gathering, Alan Broughton; 10/12 Indian Country, Philip Caputo

You get the idea. I read a lot more books than I do now. Now I read one or two a week. At best.

Yes, I write now but I think the real culprit is this-the Internet. I know I have talked about this before. Has the pace of your reading been affected by the Internet.

15 comments:

Scott D. Parker said...: Yes, but the Internet is only partly to blame. For me, it's a combination of real-life stuff (some TV, family, writing--although waking around 5am everyday mostly takes care of the writing) and a slower reading speed. Audio has really helped in that regard, but it is also possible that traditional reading has atrophied a bit.; 7:19 AM
pattinase (abbott) said...: Well, those things were fading for me by the late eighties. My kids went off to college. My job gave me time to read going back and forth on a bus. I watch less TV than ever so it's not that. It's THIS for me. Why should I read a book when I can talk with Scott Parker.; 7:28 AM
George said...: I try to read a book a day. I limit my Internet time to about an hour a day. And I don't watch much TV. I do average a movie a week. More in the Summer.; 7:29 AM
Jeff Meyerson said...: Yes! Absolutely. I get up early and spend at least a couple of hours online going through various newspapers and blogs. That would be fine, if I didn't have the need to check back in repeatedly during the day to make sure I'm not missing anything.

Even though I don't read as fast as I used to, when I find I book I really like I can still zip through it pretty quickly, like 300 + pages in a day quick. But I guess I don't feel the same urgency I used to.

Back in the 1970s, when I first started reading mysteries, I was reading hundreds a year. I got involved with mystery fanzines ca. 1977, and my reading dropped from 262 books in 1976 to 102 in 1977 to 39 in 1978! I did eventually find more of a balance and got my total up to 2 books a week for most of the 1980s, 3 a week in the 1990s, and hit 200 in 1997. 2001 and 2002 were the last years I read over 200 books. I'm reading about 3 books a week currently. Short stories both help and hurt the totals. I started reading one every day in August of 1995. For the last three years I've kept a record of every story I've read too - 760 in 2014, 786 last year.; 7:35 AM
Anonymous said...: I was a voracious reader (sometimes to the exclusion of all else) during my teens and twenties. It was not uncommon for me to find a "new to me" writer and read his/her entire body of work within a couple of weeks (Robertson Davies and Barbara Pym come to mind). That pace slowed down with increased work demands then marriage and kids in the 1980s/1990s--plus, I discovered you can burn out on even the best writer if you read too much of their work too fast (Angela Thirkell comes to mind). I find nowadays I average two books a week--but I read a lot more long-form non-fiction on the internet. I'll always be a reader, but my pace has slowed way down in the past 20 years.

--Deb; 7:36 AM
Jeff Meyerson said...: The truth is, Jackie reads a lot more now than she used to but she is still a television addict who watches 3-4 shows a night. When she is not around I rarely turn on the television (other than news and sports) and read more, but I can't really read and watch.; 7:37 AM
Anonymous said...: Oh, I think the Internet has a major effect on people's time and attention span, Patti. It's insidious, but it's definitely there.; 8:03 AM
Dana King said...: I probably read more now than I ever did. Reading used to be ab activity as time permitted. I read a lot, but didn't make appointments for it. Now I have time set aside for reading, usually at lunch, right after work, and before I go to bed.

I also read a lot slower than I used to. Time was when I enjoyed powering through books. Now I like to linger over them.; 8:23 AM
pattinase (abbott) said...: Like Deb, I used to go through writers like that. And Pym and Davies were two favorites. I remember going through Christie in a summer. Same with all of those early 20th century crime writers.
Now I rarely go to a second book by a writer. The similarity in writing style and themes put me off doing that.
The exception would be Tana French, Laura Lippman and a few more mainstream writers. Joe Landsdale perhaps. It is nothing to do with quality-more to do with time running out. And if you read perhaps 75 books a year, you want to sample widely.; 8:44 AM
Jeff Meyerson said...: I read that way a lot in the '70s, though even then I had so many writers I was reading that it was rare to read a bunch in a row. One exception was Simenon, as I would often read three in a row. In the early 70s it was Christie, then Sayers. In 1975 I read 11 of Anthony Powell's Dance to the Music of Time in a month, including 8 in a row. I followed that with 9 of Richard Stark (Westlake)'s Parker books (4 in a row), then the first 4 Raymond Chandler novels. I read 11 Christies in the first two weeks of December 1971, then another 11 in January of 1972. In May through August of 1973 I read 28 Erle Stanley Gardners, including 13 in a row.

I've also done it with non fiction, reading the 5-volume Henry James biography by Leon Edel over two weeks in early 1974.

Those days are gone, sadly. In the last three years I've read two books in a row by the same author five times (Lawrence Block, Bill Crider, Bill Pronzini, Kevin Wilson, Nathan Lowell). The last time I read three in a row? Can't remember. OK, I checked, It was Rick Riordan in January of 2010.; 9:11 AM
Rick Robinson said...: Yes, the Internet takes time away from reading, but not nearly so much as work used to, before I retired! I've never been a fast reader, like George and Jeff. I'm a book or two a week, depending on book length, and how caught up in the book l am. My goal is always 104 books read per year, and most years I do that, or more.

When I first retired, I would get up and have coffee on my patio and read for a couple of hours before I did anything else. Then would come errands and chores, etc. now I spend the first hour reading the newspaper and blogs, and I check back to those blogs again in the afternoon, so that's another hour. That's 2 hours of reading time a day I spend looking at the screen instead of reading, plus the time putting together and posting my own posts, and answering comments to them.

I also now have a larger garden, so I spend more time in it, planting, weeding, admiring, maintaining. Still, all this just means I try to read those two books per week, and if I zip through the Internet/computer time a little faster I have a better chance to enjoy that reading.; 11:06 AM
Charles Gramlich said...: Definitely I read less. My writing, video games, real life stuff, and the net all together.; 11:49 AM
Al Tucher said...: I mentioned this just recently. My attention span is in tatters, and the only thing that is bite-sized enough for me is Facebook. I'm fighting back and slogging through books, but that's the word for it--slog.; 12:52 PM
Bernadette said...: I read less now but don't entirely blame the internet - there's netflix/binge watching and work and age too. Plus I read better because of the internet - finding book blogs changed the quality of my reading by 1,000,000%; 7:36 PM
pattinase (abbott) said...: I think I watch less TV than I did 20 years ago but I replaced it with this. And Facebook is a huge time suck. HUGE. But all of my friends on there talk about books and movies so it's like a communal blog.; 7:38 PM