reading speed
I wish I was a faster reader. There’s so much I want to read, but I only average about 20 pages an hour for nonfiction. That’s not slow, but it’s not fast. I wind up accumulating a lot of books and bookmarking a lot of articles that I don’t have time to read.
I am also super-sensitive to distraction when I read and write. I cannot listen to music, have conversations going around me or a lot of clatter when I read - I wind up reading the same paragraph over and over when there are too many distractions.
One of the problems I’ve always had with speed reading tutorials is what they’re suggesting is essentially glorified skimming. I’ll skim magazine and online news articles, but I’m loathe to fly over books that way. It makes me feel like I’m not really reading the book, that I’m cheating somehow and that I might miss something. Often my reading rhythm will last for only about 20 minutes, then I’ll stop and go do something else for a moment or look up and space out before I continue. So what happens often is that in the space of two quiet evening hours I’ve reserved for school reading, I’m lucky if I get through 30 pages or so. Only with good fiction can I get into a longer-lasting rhythm.
It really sucks, people. Fast readers, ooh I envy you.
Sean said,
February 24, 2005 @ 2:35 pm
I got a great CD-ROM from the library called Ultimate Speed Reader. It actually has all these exercises that work on training your eye movement. And it’s all kind of like a video game.
John said,
February 25, 2005 @ 7:08 am
Hey Emily, I feel your pain as a fellow reading turtle! I actually gave up on it decades ago…makes my brain hurt. I do sometimes wish that my disdain for reading would have been recognized early on, so I could have at least explored learning styles with a bit more success. It is really unbelievable to me now to look back and wonder what I missed. I ain’t never read a whole book for fun or school…EVER! While that is nothing to be too stoked about, I have developed wicked visual skills and get through 1.75 bachelor’s degrees as a moron. 8 )
You can probably read circles around me. Therefore, I declare you a reading genious!
Besserwisser said,
February 26, 2005 @ 1:34 am
loath: Adj. (I’m loath to…)
loathe: Verb (I loathe to…)
Или нет?
sps said,
February 26, 2005 @ 7:08 am
As a BA in english and psych and division 1 runner for my whole undergraduate career, plus this first year as a grad student in education because of injury redshirt seasons, I am incredibly empathetic. I haven’t been on your site in awhile, but I read that post hoping that you had found an answer. I, too, am an easily distracted person. I have found that listening to jazz really helps me cut off the outside world. I use my computer to collect notes and look up definitions, though, so of course the damn thing is really tempting. While I have really enjoyed using my remaining eligibility for cross country and track, I am really looking forward to next year when I am done. i really started to get serious about my education around the end of my junior year (I think, in no small part, because of my introduction to blogging and how much information really is on the internet), but because serious running is such a demanding part of my life, I just have never been able to really dive into as much reading as I wish I could. I’ll let ya know if I find any good tricks.
asides.of.life/(parenthetical digressions) said,
February 26, 2005 @ 4:22 pm
clippings
Putting God Back Into American History “Their campaign and the liberal resistance have turned even the slightest clues about the souls of the Republic’s great leaders - that Washington left church before communion and almost never referred to Jesus, th…
Roger Darlington said,
March 1, 2005 @ 3:16 pm
I too am a slow and deliberative reader and need quiet to read. I mark up books as I read them and then review them for my web site after I’ve finished them. So I don’t read as fast or as much as some others, but I appreciate what I do read and tend to remember it.