Today, I Learned That Speed-Reading Is For Cowards
Hello friends!
So today I stumbled upon a little nugget of wisdom I thought I'd share. I'm a pretty slow reader; I clock in at an astounding 150WPM.
I've always had a problem getting to the end of books. When it takes days to weeks to finish a brief novel, picking up a book becomes a commitment. Either I am going to fall into the story and spend a few days on the couch, locked into the text. Or I'm going to obsessively check which page I'm on and calculate how long it will be before I'm finished.
To counter this, I decided to race through books with various speed reading techniques. And I gotta say, I shot up to a Herculean 300WPM and finished 4 books before the end of winter break even came into sight. That's right ladies, that's 4 books in 3 weeks. I am single.
Anyway, I had no problem getting through Trevor Noah's Born A Crime and Wonder by R.J. Palacio. They are rather simple to read, but considering that I used to finish about 1 book a year, and get 1/5th of the way through 20 others before giving up, I figured I was becoming a speed reading demigod of sorts. A soon-to-be folklore hero. A household name if you will. My story would soon sweep the nation. My inspirational tale would basically bury The Miracle on Ice and put Rocky Balboa to shame.
And then, I read PKD's Man in the High Castle. Got through it in a couple of days, no problem! However! I didn't understand why people LOVED the book so much. It was certainly interesting towards the later chapters, and it got pretty wild. But nothing about the narrative or writing struck me as particularly interesting. It seemed like a small window into alternative history, wherein, nothing too peculiar really happens.
And then I looked stuff up about the story, and a wave of shame and disappointment washed over me. I read the book so urgently, I missed SEVERAL mind-blowing twists and turns. PKD tried to take me on a ride in his strange, amphetamine fuelled mind-fuck, and I basically fell asleep in the car. I missed damn near everything that wasn't presented to me directly -- I even missed a lot of those key plot points.
So I began to read Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked Comes This Way, and got through the first 40 pages when I realized I had no idea what the fuck was actually going on. I got the gist of things, but I couldn't help but feel that I wasn't actually submerged in his world. So I went back, took my time, and slowly read through the chapters. And now, I am completely lost in this story. I'm invested, I'm interested. I decided to not ruin this book for myself by making a challenge out of, technically, completing it. And I am enjoying the story 10 times more.
Moral of the story is that my attempt to speed read was an act of cowardice, as I was more concerned that I would loose interest in the book than I was concerned with gaining interest in it.
Anyway, my smoke break is over. I'm going to go back inside. If you got this far, congratulations. And thank you for listening to me ramble!
GOODBYE!
