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November 28, 2020 4:22 PM Subscribe
Speed Reading Sucks (LA Review of Books): Seen in tandem with other popular companies like Blinkist, Joosr, and Shortform, which offer bullet-pointed, summarized versions of books so customers don’t have to spend time actually reading the books themselves, speed reading is part of the emergent market of “cram reading” and represents the latest heights to which our skill-obsessed, workaholic society aspires. I have little doubt that following lines of text with a pencil or scheduling specific times to focus on the task of reading (both “techniques” advised by Kwik) could aid in the reading process. But a more pressing matter is why such odd, over-achiever exploits are so alluring in the first place. Just why, exactly, is everyone suddenly so behind on reading, so gripped by the need to read more and faster than ever before? ¶ For the answer we need only survey the structure of our techno-capitalist civilization, with its grinding, hyper-competitive dynamism...
Speed reading has been a thing for generations? Like when I was in elementary school I was taken out of class for "enrichment lab" where one of the activities was a slide projector which would display a single line of text on the screen, and the speed at which the slides would progress could be dialed in. It was basically a "scan this line, then this one, then this one" trainer where you got faster over time. Kind of like doing scales on the piano always faster, only with words and eyes.
Anyway, there were reading comprehension self-administered tests after the readings, so you could tell if you were going too fast for your ability to comprehend or not.
That was in the 1970s. This wasn't Evelyn Wood or "down the center of the page" or any other strategy other than "scan the line as quickly as you can".
Sort of a weird thing to have grown up being trained to do, really.
posted by hippybear at 4:41 PM on November 28, 2020 [14 favorites]
Anyway, there were reading comprehension self-administered tests after the readings, so you could tell if you were going too fast for your ability to comprehend or not.
That was in the 1970s. This wasn't Evelyn Wood or "down the center of the page" or any other strategy other than "scan the line as quickly as you can".
Sort of a weird thing to have grown up being trained to do, really.
posted by hippybear at 4:41 PM on November 28, 2020 [14 favorites]
It's about Russia.
posted by betweenthebars at 4:47 PM on November 28, 2020 [8 favorites]
posted by betweenthebars at 4:47 PM on November 28, 2020 [8 favorites]
Maybe it's because I hang out in a lot of leftist librarian circles where people brag about stuff like "oh this year was a light reading year I only managed to finish 57 titles" but I do think there is an element of speed-reading envy that isn't solely driven by capitalist workaholism. There is definitely some humblebragging performative intellectualism about reading accomplishments at work among a lot of anti-capitalist avid readers.
I have slowly embraced my slow reading tendencies (and also realized that a lot of "fast readers" I know are reading reams of light fiction while I slog through 500 page political biographies), but there is a lot of dick measuring even among socialist booknerds about how much they read. I really wish people would knock it off, and the best way to start is to abolish the "every book I read this year" comprehensive list tradition.
posted by mostly vowels at 5:02 PM on November 28, 2020 [36 favorites]
I have slowly embraced my slow reading tendencies (and also realized that a lot of "fast readers" I know are reading reams of light fiction while I slog through 500 page political biographies), but there is a lot of dick measuring even among socialist booknerds about how much they read. I really wish people would knock it off, and the best way to start is to abolish the "every book I read this year" comprehensive list tradition.
posted by mostly vowels at 5:02 PM on November 28, 2020 [36 favorites]
(Also: my comment above is not to shame light fiction. I need to get better about mixing up my own reading choices. But I think the emphasis on quantitative reading accomplishments expressed by a single number as opposed to qualitative reading accomplishments which is harder to measure does a major disservice to readers of all speeds.)
posted by mostly vowels at 5:04 PM on November 28, 2020 [11 favorites]
posted by mostly vowels at 5:04 PM on November 28, 2020 [11 favorites]
Yes I did the speed reading class with the slide projector machine in high school. I actually had fun in that class. The faster reading capability I achieved in that class didn't last too long, though.
Summarized books have also been around for generations. They sell 'abridged' versions of books and there used to be something called Readers Digest Condensed Books, though they stopped publishing those in the 1990s. But those are old. Blinkist, Joosr, and Shortform are new.
posted by eye of newt at 5:11 PM on November 28, 2020 [9 favorites]
Summarized books have also been around for generations. They sell 'abridged' versions of books and there used to be something called Readers Digest Condensed Books, though they stopped publishing those in the 1990s. But those are old. Blinkist, Joosr, and Shortform are new.
posted by eye of newt at 5:11 PM on November 28, 2020 [9 favorites]
Just why, exactly, is everyone suddenly so behind on reading, so gripped by the need to read more and faster than ever before?
Have you *seen* how many good books come out every year?!
posted by bashing rocks together at 5:39 PM on November 28, 2020 [22 favorites]
Have you *seen* how many good books come out every year?!
posted by bashing rocks together at 5:39 PM on November 28, 2020 [22 favorites]
It’s not where did you go and what did you see, it’s just how many steps did you do. Speed reading is the intellectual equivalent to that yearly hot dog eating contest.
posted by njohnson23 at 5:44 PM on November 28, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by njohnson23 at 5:44 PM on November 28, 2020 [1 favorite]
If you can read a full-length book in a day and get as much out of it as you would have if you'd spent more time with it, that's not your success, it's the book's failure.
posted by escabeche at 5:53 PM on November 28, 2020 [12 favorites]
posted by escabeche at 5:53 PM on November 28, 2020 [12 favorites]
Is it ironic that I started skimming this article because it bored me?
I am a natural born speed reader. Nobody knows how I figured out how to do it--my parents read aloud to me a lot and I guess I figured out the mechanics of this from there. One of my teachers in high school showed us a video on speed reading and apparently speed readers mentally take a picture of the whole page and go down the middle of it rather than reading line by line--and apparently people's eyes actually just bounce randomly all over the damn pages and aren't even going sequentially! That's why it's so slow for everyone else?! I wish I knew of this video online (this was kinda pre-Internet).
In some respects, it's great for being an English major. In other respects, I have to physically pack 20something books when I go on vacation and I tend to drain ereaders/phones dry after a few hours.
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:06 PM on November 28, 2020 [18 favorites]
I am a natural born speed reader. Nobody knows how I figured out how to do it--my parents read aloud to me a lot and I guess I figured out the mechanics of this from there. One of my teachers in high school showed us a video on speed reading and apparently speed readers mentally take a picture of the whole page and go down the middle of it rather than reading line by line--and apparently people's eyes actually just bounce randomly all over the damn pages and aren't even going sequentially! That's why it's so slow for everyone else?! I wish I knew of this video online (this was kinda pre-Internet).
In some respects, it's great for being an English major. In other respects, I have to physically pack 20something books when I go on vacation and I tend to drain ereaders/phones dry after a few hours.
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:06 PM on November 28, 2020 [18 favorites]
I have slowly embraced my slow reading tendencies (and also realized that a lot of "fast readers" I know are reading reams of light fiction while I slog through 500 page political biographies)
I stopped using the goodreads yearly reading goal thingie because of this distinction. At first it seemed like a great thing, set a goal then have a progress bar and metrics on how well I was living up to that goal. I basically am always reading a book so why not? After a few years I realized I felt pressured to read more light sci-fi novels -- which I often will read in one sitting on a lazy Sunday -- versus more difficult reads when I was "falling behind" on my progress bar. Which was perverse.
posted by selenized at 6:08 PM on November 28, 2020 [6 favorites]
I stopped using the goodreads yearly reading goal thingie because of this distinction. At first it seemed like a great thing, set a goal then have a progress bar and metrics on how well I was living up to that goal. I basically am always reading a book so why not? After a few years I realized I felt pressured to read more light sci-fi novels -- which I often will read in one sitting on a lazy Sunday -- versus more difficult reads when I was "falling behind" on my progress bar. Which was perverse.
posted by selenized at 6:08 PM on November 28, 2020 [6 favorites]
As previously mentioned, summarized books have existed for yoinks and this is just new branding for a very old thing.
At the same time, there is definitely a particular coterie of people for whom it is important to read ALL the personal enrichment books very quickly. (It's adjacent to the Tim Ferriss 4 Hour Work Week thing.) I hung out with one of them for a while and got sucked into the lifestyle briefly. It's exhausting and a kind of sickness. There's this sense that you ALWAYS have to be doing something "productive" and that literally every activity you participate in can be optimized to be more efficient. (Down to reheating something in a microwave for 2 minutes and 22 seconds because pushing the same button three times is quicker.) It was not healthy. There's a lot of them in the tech sector, and it's probably why we are seeing those apps flourish right now.
posted by rednikki at 6:10 PM on November 28, 2020 [5 favorites]
At the same time, there is definitely a particular coterie of people for whom it is important to read ALL the personal enrichment books very quickly. (It's adjacent to the Tim Ferriss 4 Hour Work Week thing.) I hung out with one of them for a while and got sucked into the lifestyle briefly. It's exhausting and a kind of sickness. There's this sense that you ALWAYS have to be doing something "productive" and that literally every activity you participate in can be optimized to be more efficient. (Down to reheating something in a microwave for 2 minutes and 22 seconds because pushing the same button three times is quicker.) It was not healthy. There's a lot of them in the tech sector, and it's probably why we are seeing those apps flourish right now.
posted by rednikki at 6:10 PM on November 28, 2020 [5 favorites]
"Suddenly"?? Cliffs Notes has been a thing for decades - at least since I was in high school in the 70s - and many a student has relied on them to pass tests without slogging through the full texts of required books.
posted by Greg_Ace at 6:16 PM on November 28, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by Greg_Ace at 6:16 PM on November 28, 2020 [2 favorites]
Ha, I did the projected-line speed reading thing too in school. But reading fast was already something I did, and while I enjoyed "winning" at it, it felt kind of pointless.
The thing is, while I will read fast to find out what happens, if it's any good I'll probably read it at least two more times at some point to get all the nuances. If I was a less anxious type, I could just read it slow once.
posted by emjaybee at 6:16 PM on November 28, 2020 [3 favorites]
The thing is, while I will read fast to find out what happens, if it's any good I'll probably read it at least two more times at some point to get all the nuances. If I was a less anxious type, I could just read it slow once.
posted by emjaybee at 6:16 PM on November 28, 2020 [3 favorites]
This genre of critique was already around in the eighteenth century (complaints about skimming, in particular) and on into the nineteenth (more complaints about readers relying on excerpts in periodicals, the "beauties of" and "gems from" formats, abridged books, and so on). According to Nicholas Dames, speed reading explicitly identified and understood as such dates to the late Victorian period. It's the corollary to all the grumbling about what came to be known as "book-making," one of the more popular Victorian critical terms for describing bad popular literature. You can certainly argue that the phenomenon has accelerated during our current phase of capitalism, but anxieties about readers, rapid consumption, and book production--especially once the printing process is simplified and creates a flow of cheap books and periodicals--are centuries old at this point. (And I don't think neo-Gnosticism quite explains the situation...)
posted by thomas j wise at 6:22 PM on November 28, 2020 [3 favorites]
posted by thomas j wise at 6:22 PM on November 28, 2020 [3 favorites]
Nothing at all new under the sun here.
Yes when just extracting information, especially when academic performance is a priority, skills at the various types of reading (skimming, scanning) can save time, with which to then enjoy life.
But when reading to enjoy Art, or just for pleasure, quantity and speed should never come into it, lingering over some beautiful phrasing, even repeating passages, carefully parsing for layers of meaning is a critical part of the process.
Just pretending you've enjoyed dozens of titles in the time you should have spent on one is as foolish as reading summaries and reviews of films rather than watching them.
posted by goinWhereTheClimateSuitsMyClothes at 6:33 PM on November 28, 2020 [5 favorites]
Yes when just extracting information, especially when academic performance is a priority, skills at the various types of reading (skimming, scanning) can save time, with which to then enjoy life.
But when reading to enjoy Art, or just for pleasure, quantity and speed should never come into it, lingering over some beautiful phrasing, even repeating passages, carefully parsing for layers of meaning is a critical part of the process.
Just pretending you've enjoyed dozens of titles in the time you should have spent on one is as foolish as reading summaries and reviews of films rather than watching them.
posted by goinWhereTheClimateSuitsMyClothes at 6:33 PM on November 28, 2020 [5 favorites]
I dig this essay, I was ready to be all dismissive about it, but they had me at the Gnostic references.
posted by ovvl at 7:09 PM on November 28, 2020
posted by ovvl at 7:09 PM on November 28, 2020
Neat! I didn't know I already speedread! I know lots of people who read faster. I wonder if they know they're speedreading. Also sometimes linear reading has its uses. But yep, I definitely read non-slog material nonlinearly.
posted by aniola at 7:11 PM on November 28, 2020
posted by aniola at 7:11 PM on November 28, 2020
Shit, I hate capitalism as much as Nevada Ryan I'm sure. I think they make a solid argument about why this trend is surging right now.
But on the other hand, life sucks. We're all influenced by our culture, and if, at this moment in history, it makes you happy to listen to a million rushed book summaries - go for it. It's probably better for you than lots of other modern day coping strategies like doomscrolling or shopping.
I find this article a bit suspect in it's glorification of old school 'greats' like 'Athenians' and 'Taoist priests' and my suspicion is reinforced by Ryan referencing a dozen authors and thinkers every single one of which is male. Could be just me but I think the old days were bad too.
I'm never going to get into books summaries or speed reading, but I do get a little serotonin rush when I finish reading or learning something, and there are times I'd much rather read a paragraph or two summary than a whole book on a topic.
posted by latkes at 7:14 PM on November 28, 2020 [6 favorites]
But on the other hand, life sucks. We're all influenced by our culture, and if, at this moment in history, it makes you happy to listen to a million rushed book summaries - go for it. It's probably better for you than lots of other modern day coping strategies like doomscrolling or shopping.
I find this article a bit suspect in it's glorification of old school 'greats' like 'Athenians' and 'Taoist priests' and my suspicion is reinforced by Ryan referencing a dozen authors and thinkers every single one of which is male. Could be just me but I think the old days were bad too.
I'm never going to get into books summaries or speed reading, but I do get a little serotonin rush when I finish reading or learning something, and there are times I'd much rather read a paragraph or two summary than a whole book on a topic.
posted by latkes at 7:14 PM on November 28, 2020 [6 favorites]
I'm in the same camp as Jenfullmoon. I've always been a fast reader. I averaged about 100 pages an hour until I was laid off for a stretch during the 2000 recession, and since I had zero money, I entertained myself by reading all my books over again, so I got even faster. And yes, I read mostly fiction, although not all fiction is light, fast reading, that's for sure. Skimming is a lot faster, and I can do the thing where I can look at a page for a second or two and get a gist of the whole thing, or pick out details, even if I can't exactly quote sentences.
It has very limited uses. I'm the opposite of people who have 58 browser tabs open to stuff they intend to read--I run out of internet every day. If I have to read something for work (training, product specs, whatever), it goes quickly. If you had an uncomfortable page open and hope you alt-tabbed fast enough that I didn't see what you were looking at--nope, I saw it. (Don't worry, I'll pretend I didn't.) And yeah, I was an early adopter of e-readers because hauling around 10 lbs of books on vacation is literally a drag.
But frankly, I don't put naturally fast readers in the same category as people who deliberately train themselves to cram-read, like the article is talking about. I had an ex-boyfriend who tried to claim that I "didn't comprehend as much of the book" because I read fast, and of course there are comments right here in this thread from people who think that their choice of reading material or "lingering over phrases" is somehow more special at their reading speed. That's just more of the dick-waving and insecurity that drives people to cram-read. It's like saying that the person who wins the marathon gets less out of the race than the person who finishes last. Some people just read faster, just like some people just run faster.
posted by Autumnheart at 7:17 PM on November 28, 2020 [31 favorites]
It has very limited uses. I'm the opposite of people who have 58 browser tabs open to stuff they intend to read--I run out of internet every day. If I have to read something for work (training, product specs, whatever), it goes quickly. If you had an uncomfortable page open and hope you alt-tabbed fast enough that I didn't see what you were looking at--nope, I saw it. (Don't worry, I'll pretend I didn't.) And yeah, I was an early adopter of e-readers because hauling around 10 lbs of books on vacation is literally a drag.
But frankly, I don't put naturally fast readers in the same category as people who deliberately train themselves to cram-read, like the article is talking about. I had an ex-boyfriend who tried to claim that I "didn't comprehend as much of the book" because I read fast, and of course there are comments right here in this thread from people who think that their choice of reading material or "lingering over phrases" is somehow more special at their reading speed. That's just more of the dick-waving and insecurity that drives people to cram-read. It's like saying that the person who wins the marathon gets less out of the race than the person who finishes last. Some people just read faster, just like some people just run faster.
posted by Autumnheart at 7:17 PM on November 28, 2020 [31 favorites]
Some people just read faster, just like some people just run faster.
Yes! Honestly, sometimes I wish I was not such a fast reader. Generally speaking, if I look at a not-extremely-long sentence I understand it with zero lag - I'm not really registering each individual word in sequence - and I frequently find that when I'm reading something suspenseful or leading up to a big reveal, I have to physically cover the page below the line I'm reading, because if my eyes dart below for just a second I will ruin it for myself. I also have to turn off subtitles, which I usually enjoy, for comedies, because it ruins the punchlines for me.
posted by showbiz_liz at 7:32 PM on November 28, 2020 [18 favorites]
Yes! Honestly, sometimes I wish I was not such a fast reader. Generally speaking, if I look at a not-extremely-long sentence I understand it with zero lag - I'm not really registering each individual word in sequence - and I frequently find that when I'm reading something suspenseful or leading up to a big reveal, I have to physically cover the page below the line I'm reading, because if my eyes dart below for just a second I will ruin it for myself. I also have to turn off subtitles, which I usually enjoy, for comedies, because it ruins the punchlines for me.
posted by showbiz_liz at 7:32 PM on November 28, 2020 [18 favorites]
I read bullet pointed summaries of books with ideas I know I might be interested in but whose overall content I'm pretty sure I'm not interested in. Productivity books are an excellent example of this category, I want the handful of potentially useful tips not all the anecdotes they use to fill the pages.
As a person with a naturally high reading speed, I do not read slowly in order to savor a book. If a book is really good I re-read it, that's my savoring style. I read slowly when I'm very, very bored but struggling to keep going. (often I'm reading the same line multiple times just trying to pay enough attention to move on to the next one...)
I also listen to podcast at 1.6x speed but that's because, with only a handful of exceptions, I find podcast talking speed to be unbearably slow. When I can't speed it up, I can't listen to the podcast at all. I now vaguely suspect this is an ADD thing (at least, ADD podcasters often talk at a pace I find comfortable to listen to without needing to speed it up much)
posted by Cozybee at 7:33 PM on November 28, 2020 [12 favorites]
As a person with a naturally high reading speed, I do not read slowly in order to savor a book. If a book is really good I re-read it, that's my savoring style. I read slowly when I'm very, very bored but struggling to keep going. (often I'm reading the same line multiple times just trying to pay enough attention to move on to the next one...)
I also listen to podcast at 1.6x speed but that's because, with only a handful of exceptions, I find podcast talking speed to be unbearably slow. When I can't speed it up, I can't listen to the podcast at all. I now vaguely suspect this is an ADD thing (at least, ADD podcasters often talk at a pace I find comfortable to listen to without needing to speed it up much)
posted by Cozybee at 7:33 PM on November 28, 2020 [12 favorites]
(Down to reheating something in a microwave for 2 minutes and 22 seconds because pushing the same button three times is quicker.) It was not healthy. There's a lot of them in the tech sector, and it's probably why we are seeing those apps flourish right now.
I'm a little surprised to hear you say tech sector, because premature optimization has been called the root of all evil by Knuth, you'd think they'd have a better chance of avoiding that sort of behavior.
On the other hand, when someone says people in the tech sector are doing something dumb, I'm not really that surprised. And I work in the tech sector.
posted by axiom at 7:35 PM on November 28, 2020 [3 favorites]
I'm a little surprised to hear you say tech sector, because premature optimization has been called the root of all evil by Knuth, you'd think they'd have a better chance of avoiding that sort of behavior.
On the other hand, when someone says people in the tech sector are doing something dumb, I'm not really that surprised. And I work in the tech sector.
posted by axiom at 7:35 PM on November 28, 2020 [3 favorites]
If you can read a full-length book in a day and get as much out of it as you would have if you'd spent more time with it, that's not your success, it's the book's failure.
Yeah, sorry. Not true for everyone. I'm a natural speed reader-- I think today I might have been called hyperlexic. I taught myself to read when I was 2 before the teachers got to me and I could read (not necessarily with comprehension) anything put in front of me by the time I was 5. I read groups of words at a time and not line by line, as described above. And yes, my enjoyment and reading comprehension are just fine, thank you. In a busy week I read 2-3 books a week. If I really have time to read, 5+. As a maladjusted kid, I read 7-10 books a week.
posted by frumiousb at 7:47 PM on November 28, 2020 [26 favorites]
Yeah, sorry. Not true for everyone. I'm a natural speed reader-- I think today I might have been called hyperlexic. I taught myself to read when I was 2 before the teachers got to me and I could read (not necessarily with comprehension) anything put in front of me by the time I was 5. I read groups of words at a time and not line by line, as described above. And yes, my enjoyment and reading comprehension are just fine, thank you. In a busy week I read 2-3 books a week. If I really have time to read, 5+. As a maladjusted kid, I read 7-10 books a week.
posted by frumiousb at 7:47 PM on November 28, 2020 [26 favorites]
...I have to physically pack 20something books when I go on vacation and I tend to drain ereaders/phones dry after a few hours.
Pro tip: get 2 readers/tablets and a back up charger. Still weighs less and occupies less space than two books. Heck, get four backups, and you could go for days without an electric outlet. A $40 tablet and a subscription to a digital library and all of its contents is cheaper than a couple hardbacks. (I love the heft and smell off books, but it's the words that I crave. And reading in bed with the light out!)
posted by BlueHorse at 8:03 PM on November 28, 2020 [3 favorites]
Pro tip: get 2 readers/tablets and a back up charger. Still weighs less and occupies less space than two books. Heck, get four backups, and you could go for days without an electric outlet. A $40 tablet and a subscription to a digital library and all of its contents is cheaper than a couple hardbacks. (I love the heft and smell off books, but it's the words that I crave. And reading in bed with the light out!)
posted by BlueHorse at 8:03 PM on November 28, 2020 [3 favorites]
I'm a slow reader. I need to stop and think critically about the stuff I'm reading, and I can't do that while I'm reading the next thing. If it's dense material about math I need to stop and take breaks while I mentally work over a section I just read. I know how to skim, e.g. internet articles, but it gives me little pleasure to do so.
posted by polymodus at 8:42 PM on November 28, 2020
posted by polymodus at 8:42 PM on November 28, 2020
I also have to turn off subtitles, which I usually enjoy, for comedies, because it ruins the punchlines for me.
That part I think you have in common with a lot of people who don't think of themselves as particular speedy readers. Surely we can't be far from technology that would automatically print each word of a subtitle as it is being said?
posted by straight at 9:05 PM on November 28, 2020 [1 favorite]
That part I think you have in common with a lot of people who don't think of themselves as particular speedy readers. Surely we can't be far from technology that would automatically print each word of a subtitle as it is being said?
posted by straight at 9:05 PM on November 28, 2020 [1 favorite]
With this thread, the cranberry sauce thread and the bathing thread, I believe that metafilter has reached peak insufferability.
Let's look down our noses at people who read genre fiction *gasp* slowly, who prefer 99c canned cranberry sauce to your "simple" artisanal recipe that requires fifteen bucks worth of organic ingredients, an hour of time and a thousand dollar food processor. Oh and heaven forbid people practice varying cleanliness standards.
And I just realized that I forgot the candle thread. Ugh.
posted by Literaryhero at 9:16 PM on November 28, 2020 [20 favorites]
Let's look down our noses at people who read genre fiction *gasp* slowly, who prefer 99c canned cranberry sauce to your "simple" artisanal recipe that requires fifteen bucks worth of organic ingredients, an hour of time and a thousand dollar food processor. Oh and heaven forbid people practice varying cleanliness standards.
And I just realized that I forgot the candle thread. Ugh.
posted by Literaryhero at 9:16 PM on November 28, 2020 [20 favorites]
I also listen to podcast at 1.6x speed but that's because, with only a handful of exceptions, I find podcast talking speed to be unbearably slow. When I can't speed it up, I can't listen to the podcast at all. I now vaguely suspect this is an ADD thing
I suspect so too. I generally speed up any video over 5 minutes long to at least 1.25, sometimes 1.50. It kind of depends on what I want to get out of it. Most of the time I just want the jist.
I often do the same with audiobooks. There's definitely an element of impatience with the "normal" rate of speech, but also the fact that my ADD heart sinks when I see the book is 9 hours long, and if I can get some of that time back by listening faster, why not.
posted by Serene Empress Dork at 9:34 PM on November 28, 2020 [1 favorite]
I suspect so too. I generally speed up any video over 5 minutes long to at least 1.25, sometimes 1.50. It kind of depends on what I want to get out of it. Most of the time I just want the jist.
I often do the same with audiobooks. There's definitely an element of impatience with the "normal" rate of speech, but also the fact that my ADD heart sinks when I see the book is 9 hours long, and if I can get some of that time back by listening faster, why not.
posted by Serene Empress Dork at 9:34 PM on November 28, 2020 [1 favorite]
that's why I think 'Franny and Zoe' should have a built-in hourglass.
posted by clavdivs at 9:53 PM on November 28, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by clavdivs at 9:53 PM on November 28, 2020 [1 favorite]
I can't speak for other people but I was just delighted to learn my nonlinear reading style has a name and is normal.
And I found all those threads quite varied. Maybe it is because I read with favorites turned off?
posted by aniola at 9:56 PM on November 28, 2020 [6 favorites]
And I found all those threads quite varied. Maybe it is because I read with favorites turned off?
posted by aniola at 9:56 PM on November 28, 2020 [6 favorites]
(Down to reheating something in a microwave for 2 minutes and 22 seconds because pushing the same button three times is quicker.)
A certain MeFite may have been inordinately proud of himself for realizing that setting the microwave for 90 seconds was the same as setting it for 1:30, with one less button press.
As for reading, it really depends on the style of the author. Some books, I want to crawl into the world they create and never leave; this is true for Becky Chambers' Wayfarer books, as well as a lot of Stephen King's output, at least until the creepazoid du jour shows up. Others, such as King's son Joe Hill, I have to do at least a quick initial read-through to find out how the plot is resolved because he puts so much tension in it, although I may go back later to see the stuff that I missed in my haste.
Finally:
With this thread, the cranberry sauce thread and the bathing thread, I believe that metafilter has reached peak insufferability.
Yeah, you'd think that "overthinking a plate of beans" was like the site's motto or something. It's not even like people have to necessarily choose one mode over the other, even; I will make the Mama Stamberg weirdo pink cranberry relish (in fact, I made it this year, even though I was the only one eating it because pandemic), but I'll also happily consume the stuff in the can; I consider them to be two different foods that happen to share one ingredient. MetaFilter is a land of contrasts.
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:03 PM on November 28, 2020 [8 favorites]
A certain MeFite may have been inordinately proud of himself for realizing that setting the microwave for 90 seconds was the same as setting it for 1:30, with one less button press.
As for reading, it really depends on the style of the author. Some books, I want to crawl into the world they create and never leave; this is true for Becky Chambers' Wayfarer books, as well as a lot of Stephen King's output, at least until the creepazoid du jour shows up. Others, such as King's son Joe Hill, I have to do at least a quick initial read-through to find out how the plot is resolved because he puts so much tension in it, although I may go back later to see the stuff that I missed in my haste.
Finally:
With this thread, the cranberry sauce thread and the bathing thread, I believe that metafilter has reached peak insufferability.
Yeah, you'd think that "overthinking a plate of beans" was like the site's motto or something. It's not even like people have to necessarily choose one mode over the other, even; I will make the Mama Stamberg weirdo pink cranberry relish (in fact, I made it this year, even though I was the only one eating it because pandemic), but I'll also happily consume the stuff in the can; I consider them to be two different foods that happen to share one ingredient. MetaFilter is a land of contrasts.
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:03 PM on November 28, 2020 [8 favorites]
The whole concept feels a bit grim and odd to me, except for one genre of books which I think are the, or at least a, focus here - business / management / productivity books. These so often contain, per chapter, a single idea that could be expressed in one or two sentences, and is then spun out with loads of guffy examples of people and situations who quite clearly did not really exist. Even when the idea itself is useful and insightful, I end up skimming the rest because it's such obvious filler. So many of these books would be just as useful as a single short article that these summaries seem like a genuinely useful service.
For fiction, literature, nonfiction where the quality of the writing is actually a positive feature of the reading experience, sure, totally baffling.
posted by ominous_paws at 10:29 PM on November 28, 2020 [14 favorites]
For fiction, literature, nonfiction where the quality of the writing is actually a positive feature of the reading experience, sure, totally baffling.
posted by ominous_paws at 10:29 PM on November 28, 2020 [14 favorites]
I averaged about 100 pages an hour
Me too, last I checked-ish!
If you had an uncomfortable page open and hope you alt-tabbed fast enough that I didn't see what you were looking at--nope, I saw it. (Don't worry, I'll pretend I didn't.)
Muahahahah. This is how I found out one of my bosses was job hunting. I also spotted my crush reading a website on songs to sing to your crush on his phone ;) (Then read the site and thought, "Yeah, he wouldn't be into any of this...." he just did songs he knows I like.)
I had an ex-boyfriend who tried to claim that I "didn't comprehend as much of the book" because I read fast,
Yeah, those people give me pop quizzes as to what I read, and shut up real fast after that.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:35 PM on November 28, 2020 [8 favorites]
Me too, last I checked-ish!
If you had an uncomfortable page open and hope you alt-tabbed fast enough that I didn't see what you were looking at--nope, I saw it. (Don't worry, I'll pretend I didn't.)
Muahahahah. This is how I found out one of my bosses was job hunting. I also spotted my crush reading a website on songs to sing to your crush on his phone ;) (Then read the site and thought, "Yeah, he wouldn't be into any of this...." he just did songs he knows I like.)
I had an ex-boyfriend who tried to claim that I "didn't comprehend as much of the book" because I read fast,
Yeah, those people give me pop quizzes as to what I read, and shut up real fast after that.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:35 PM on November 28, 2020 [8 favorites]
Let's look down our noses at people who read genre fiction *gasp* slowly
Well as usual I believe we have partisans on the side of slow reading as well as fast reading! But mostly we are just rather precocious children, here at Metafilter.
posted by atoxyl at 12:11 AM on November 29, 2020 [5 favorites]
Well as usual I believe we have partisans on the side of slow reading as well as fast reading! But mostly we are just rather precocious children, here at Metafilter.
posted by atoxyl at 12:11 AM on November 29, 2020 [5 favorites]
I'm the opposite of people who have 58 browser tabs open to stuff they intend to read--I run out of internet every day.
I was going to say something doesn't square here with my reading habits and tabbing habits but I suppose I do not keep dozens upon dozens of tabs open of things I intend to read. I keep dozens upon dozens of tabs open of things the existence of which I would like, in theory, to remember.
posted by atoxyl at 12:14 AM on November 29, 2020 [8 favorites]
I was going to say something doesn't square here with my reading habits and tabbing habits but I suppose I do not keep dozens upon dozens of tabs open of things I intend to read. I keep dozens upon dozens of tabs open of things the existence of which I would like, in theory, to remember.
posted by atoxyl at 12:14 AM on November 29, 2020 [8 favorites]
Also just read the whole thread and now need to know if we're doing an annual "weird flex but OK" award and if so how I can submit it
posted by ominous_paws at 12:21 AM on November 29, 2020 [11 favorites]
posted by ominous_paws at 12:21 AM on November 29, 2020 [11 favorites]
Well as usual I believe we have partisans on the side of slow reading as well as fast reading!
Pfft. Obviously the superior method is to do as I do. Read quickly, but then pause and stare off into space, perhaps stroking your chin or smoking a fancy French cigarette, and think a bit about what you've read, your existence on earth, and why others aren't quite as clever as you. Then turn back to the book, read a bit more and repeat over the course of a few weeks, ideally accomplished where others can see the book you're reading and your contemplative demeanor, which will doubtless impress. That way you read both quickly and slowly, beating the others at their little games. (One must bring more than one book for maximum effect, so people know you're cross referencing and not just stuck on a tricky chapter or some such.)
posted by gusottertrout at 12:28 AM on November 29, 2020 [6 favorites]
Pfft. Obviously the superior method is to do as I do. Read quickly, but then pause and stare off into space, perhaps stroking your chin or smoking a fancy French cigarette, and think a bit about what you've read, your existence on earth, and why others aren't quite as clever as you. Then turn back to the book, read a bit more and repeat over the course of a few weeks, ideally accomplished where others can see the book you're reading and your contemplative demeanor, which will doubtless impress. That way you read both quickly and slowly, beating the others at their little games. (One must bring more than one book for maximum effect, so people know you're cross referencing and not just stuck on a tricky chapter or some such.)
posted by gusottertrout at 12:28 AM on November 29, 2020 [6 favorites]
The whole concept feels a bit grim and odd to me, except for one genre of books which I think are the, or at least a, focus here - business / management / productivity books. These so often contain, per chapter, a single idea that could be expressed in one or two sentences, and is then spun out with loads of guffy examples of people and situations who quite clearly did not really exist.
I mean, I just finished reading Checklist Manifesto, which is solidly in the genre, and you're not wrong but they do have a purpose. Good anecdotes help explain, help persuade, and hopefully help make the lesson stick longer. Like, the WW2 story of Wald armoring planes where the returning ones had no holes will probably be bouncing around my skull forever as the example of survivor bias. Similarly, if anyone ever says that we need more expertise not checklists, I can now point out the initial test flight of the "Flying Fortress" B-17 crashed shortly after takeoff and killed the most senior pilot on the field that day, because the crew forgot to disable the gust locks.
Anyways, I bought a Kindle this year for my self-birthday gift, and while I'm no speed reader, my challenge in professional reading is the nearly involuntary bouts of self reflection they can trigger. 10 minutes spent reading an chapter on blameless post-mortems leads to a 45 minute self-flagellation about how I should have responded to an executive line of inquiry at the very much not blameless post-mortem I attended that day. Or how OKRs should line up to executives goals and how I should proceed when that assumption cannot be met. So I guess in a sense, these anecdotes function as existence proofs: someone, somewhere, managed to actually do the thing described. And self-reflection is a pretty valuable experience, so I don't mind the distraction. Even if nobody gets to see me pondering existence in a coffee shop.
So I generally target about 10 pages an hour for textbooks, and maybe double that for non-fiction books. Then a few days later try to extract that one or two sentence idea into the other "SuperLearner" tool: Anki -- a spaced repetition (flashcard) app. I'm not going to disparage any readers here but if I were to practice and double or 10x my reading pace, I feel confident my own retention of the reading would drop. Maybe if I spent the time saved re-reading it would more than compensate, but Anki does exactly that for me on an ongoing basis. Been on this train for a couple years now, since I realized it could be used for something other than learning languages.
posted by pwnguin at 1:01 AM on November 29, 2020 [4 favorites]
I mean, I just finished reading Checklist Manifesto, which is solidly in the genre, and you're not wrong but they do have a purpose. Good anecdotes help explain, help persuade, and hopefully help make the lesson stick longer. Like, the WW2 story of Wald armoring planes where the returning ones had no holes will probably be bouncing around my skull forever as the example of survivor bias. Similarly, if anyone ever says that we need more expertise not checklists, I can now point out the initial test flight of the "Flying Fortress" B-17 crashed shortly after takeoff and killed the most senior pilot on the field that day, because the crew forgot to disable the gust locks.
Anyways, I bought a Kindle this year for my self-birthday gift, and while I'm no speed reader, my challenge in professional reading is the nearly involuntary bouts of self reflection they can trigger. 10 minutes spent reading an chapter on blameless post-mortems leads to a 45 minute self-flagellation about how I should have responded to an executive line of inquiry at the very much not blameless post-mortem I attended that day. Or how OKRs should line up to executives goals and how I should proceed when that assumption cannot be met. So I guess in a sense, these anecdotes function as existence proofs: someone, somewhere, managed to actually do the thing described. And self-reflection is a pretty valuable experience, so I don't mind the distraction. Even if nobody gets to see me pondering existence in a coffee shop.
So I generally target about 10 pages an hour for textbooks, and maybe double that for non-fiction books. Then a few days later try to extract that one or two sentence idea into the other "SuperLearner" tool: Anki -- a spaced repetition (flashcard) app. I'm not going to disparage any readers here but if I were to practice and double or 10x my reading pace, I feel confident my own retention of the reading would drop. Maybe if I spent the time saved re-reading it would more than compensate, but Anki does exactly that for me on an ongoing basis. Been on this train for a couple years now, since I realized it could be used for something other than learning languages.
posted by pwnguin at 1:01 AM on November 29, 2020 [4 favorites]
I'm a reasonably fast reader when it suits me (eg. exams). I'm also more of a generalist who often likes to have a vague notion of a lot of things, so I do have some use for summaries. I use skimming to get a general overview of a topic and decide what to devote more attention to and scanning, when I'm already fairly familar with the topic and just need to refresh a point in my memory/find addtional evidence/examples to back up an argument I'm planning to make. All of this has so far served me well in my professional life and allowed me to somewhat compensate for a million of weaknesses in other regards.
I'm also consistently failing to reach my already pathetically modest Good-Read goals, because when I read for pleasure I really like to take my time, and I often prefer books that sort of force me to (because the pace is glacial; because they're kinda hard to get into, so I get distracted a lot at first; because there's just so much going on, intellectually, emotionally, that I need to take breaks to process things; because they need to me to be in a certain frame of mind to really appreciate them, which I can't always conjure at the drop of a hat).
Does that mean I might lose some intellectual dick measuring contests? I'm not all that worried about it, and that's certainly not, because I'm so above intellectual dick measuring contests. But going by quantity alone is just not my discipline, so for me, my preferred version of weird flexes are less about how many books one has read and more about how well one can talk about them.
I've also had the luxury of parents financially supporting me through many, many years of college and graduate school, which left me plenty of time for reading fast and slow, so of course it's easy to me for to be chill about this. But if there's one thing in life I've actually learned how to do, that's reading and that's really the one thing no one could make me feel insecure about.
posted by sohalt at 1:17 AM on November 29, 2020 [3 favorites]
I'm also consistently failing to reach my already pathetically modest Good-Read goals, because when I read for pleasure I really like to take my time, and I often prefer books that sort of force me to (because the pace is glacial; because they're kinda hard to get into, so I get distracted a lot at first; because there's just so much going on, intellectually, emotionally, that I need to take breaks to process things; because they need to me to be in a certain frame of mind to really appreciate them, which I can't always conjure at the drop of a hat).
Does that mean I might lose some intellectual dick measuring contests? I'm not all that worried about it, and that's certainly not, because I'm so above intellectual dick measuring contests. But going by quantity alone is just not my discipline, so for me, my preferred version of weird flexes are less about how many books one has read and more about how well one can talk about them.
I've also had the luxury of parents financially supporting me through many, many years of college and graduate school, which left me plenty of time for reading fast and slow, so of course it's easy to me for to be chill about this. But if there's one thing in life I've actually learned how to do, that's reading and that's really the one thing no one could make me feel insecure about.
posted by sohalt at 1:17 AM on November 29, 2020 [3 favorites]
ominous_paws: "These so often contain, per chapter, a single idea that could be expressed in one or two sentences, and is then spun out with loads of guffy examples of people and situations who quite clearly did not really exist."
cf. Malcom Gladwell, where you can do this with the titles alone.
posted by chavenet at 2:34 AM on November 29, 2020 [2 favorites]
cf. Malcom Gladwell, where you can do this with the titles alone.
posted by chavenet at 2:34 AM on November 29, 2020 [2 favorites]
I've always been a fast but not speed reader. I took off a semester from University back in '92 to backpack around Europe with a friend, and one of my main logistical and budgetary problems was reading books too fast. I'd pace myself, try to limit the speed I read at or ration my reading time so I wouldn't have to lug around so many books I couldn't bear to part with or spend so much of our very strict budget on new books. I would have killed for an e-reader.
posted by signal at 4:01 AM on November 29, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by signal at 4:01 AM on November 29, 2020 [1 favorite]
These so often contain, per chapter, a single idea that could be expressed in one or two sentences, and is then spun out with loads of guffy examples of people and situations who quite clearly did not really exist.
Many of my clients are the kind of people who read this kind of book. It gives them a very noticeable cognitive and narrative aura, if you know what I mean.
posted by signal at 4:04 AM on November 29, 2020 [3 favorites]
Many of my clients are the kind of people who read this kind of book. It gives them a very noticeable cognitive and narrative aura, if you know what I mean.
posted by signal at 4:04 AM on November 29, 2020 [3 favorites]
Reading the first chapter of A Thousand Plateaus makes me feel insecure about my reading skills. I went through the motions of reading words upon words, but it gave my brain this distinct feeling of overheating.
posted by polymodus at 4:48 AM on November 29, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by polymodus at 4:48 AM on November 29, 2020 [1 favorite]
Metafilter: humblebragging performative intellectualism
posted by sammyo at 5:46 AM on November 29, 2020 [5 favorites]
posted by sammyo at 5:46 AM on November 29, 2020 [5 favorites]
Like when I was in elementary school I was taken out of class for "enrichment lab" where one of the activities was a slide projector which would display a single line of text on the screen, and the speed at which the slides would progress could be dialed in.
I remember doing that same thing a few times. It must have been a standard part of the toolkit for a while; I wonder if they still do anything like that or if education has moved on?
I am a medium-fast reader (not as fast as some of the people commenting above, but faster than most people I've been around). It was a huge benefit in grad school, where keeping up with the reading was not challenging (everything else was challenging/impossible, just not the quantity of reading), but like people have commented, it is a hassle when traveling, where I would be jealous of the slow readers who could make a single book last weeks. I can dial my reading speed slightly slower (for a book I really care about the details) or faster (for the fluffiest of genre fiction), but those aren't big changes from my default speed.
There's a type of speed reading that seems more like competitive consumption to me, but short of that, I don't see any reason to say slower or faster reading is better than the other in a big picture way. Both have their advantages and disadvantages in certain situations, and there are passionate readers of all speeds.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:07 AM on November 29, 2020 [2 favorites]
I remember doing that same thing a few times. It must have been a standard part of the toolkit for a while; I wonder if they still do anything like that or if education has moved on?
I am a medium-fast reader (not as fast as some of the people commenting above, but faster than most people I've been around). It was a huge benefit in grad school, where keeping up with the reading was not challenging (everything else was challenging/impossible, just not the quantity of reading), but like people have commented, it is a hassle when traveling, where I would be jealous of the slow readers who could make a single book last weeks. I can dial my reading speed slightly slower (for a book I really care about the details) or faster (for the fluffiest of genre fiction), but those aren't big changes from my default speed.
There's a type of speed reading that seems more like competitive consumption to me, but short of that, I don't see any reason to say slower or faster reading is better than the other in a big picture way. Both have their advantages and disadvantages in certain situations, and there are passionate readers of all speeds.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:07 AM on November 29, 2020 [2 favorites]
TLDR
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 6:27 AM on November 29, 2020 [4 favorites]
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 6:27 AM on November 29, 2020 [4 favorites]
I am a fast not a "speed " reader, and has been noted, that causes lots of extra packing issues when vacationing (I've tried a tablet, twice, and immediately returned it. It's irrational, but the thing just didn't feel right and what if I drop it in the bathtub?) especially when vacationing in a place without a convenient English language bookshop (my reading skills are depressingly monolingual, though I've been nosing around French novels in French again as if I might suddenly develop greater than a toddler-level comprehension just because and yes, I'm aware that even thinking that it might be cool will justifiable set off a massive collective "look at this intolerable, obviously American white person in a Breton t-shirt from Marshall's making goose sounds that she clearly thinks sounds like French while she pretends to, like, read untranslated Flaubert or whatever. Ugh" eyeroll) because I'm terrified of being without a book to read.
But for real, there are so many books, so, so many books I can't wait to read, so many good ones. My to-read list is frightening and my nightstand is collapsing under the weight of the pile, so much so that I've deliberately been moseying down a bit of a poetry/novella alleyway for a bit because they're literally (but absolutely not figuratively) lighter. My taste for Tomes--in part, because they take longer--has started to exact a bodily toll (earlier this year the one-two punch of The Power Broker and Ducks, Newburyport basically left me with nerve damage and yes, I realize that is yet another solid argument for the tablet. Maybe I'll try again? Third time's the charm?). I can read up to three books at a time (I learned this as a undergraduate, when I regularly had semesters where I'd have something like 30-40 books to get through). It's not so hard, not so different than switching between channels. Easier if you can connect the books thematically or find ways they can interplay off each other. But I don't necessarily like to do it that way.
I'm a bit sore at the suggestion that I get less out of books than slower readers because I love words and books and reading more than just about anything in the world. I am absorbed into them. I can forget how and who and where and when I am. Some of the best, most meaningful things I've ever read, I have flown through, ravenous, insatiable, trying to force myself to slow down because I don't want it to end. I was a lit major. I still mostly read with a pen and horrify at least half the people I know with the marginalia (I've been trying post-its, for, what my friend Patrick kinda accurately used to call my "illegible call and response moments "with text). I like to connect things when I'm reading non-fiction (and fiction, to be honest). When I'm reading fiction, I like to think about the mechanics of the way the words work on the page. I write for a living. I still, whether it's sane, aspire to write for a living. I like to pull back the curtain a bit and trying to figure out the how the writers I like do it.And yet even with all that, I laugh out loud. I jump in my seat. I get chills. I cry when I read, sometimes over something so stupid effete as the elegance of a well-turned phrase, sometimes because . . . well, I recently reread Giovanni's Room, for example, and it still ruins me. Sometimes I get turned on when I'm reading. And what I'll say about it is it's odd what turns me on in books (fun fact: it's not sex, it's rarely even about sex. For me, the sexiest parts of books are the verbs and ideas and and descriptions at once so evocative and granular you can feel them on your skin and oh yeah, the "God, I wish someone would fucking talk to me like that" dialogue).
I have a goodreads account I think about deleting all the time, in part, because it encourages me to catalog everything I've read and keep track of "reading goals" whatever that means. I keep it because I'm curious about what my friends read and it's not terrible for organizing my library (which will probably, eventually bury me Collyer brothers style if I do no just cowgirl up and buy a goddamn tablet, I KNOW, MOM). I don't read a lot because I want to read performatively. I read because I don't know what else to do. I'm not a gamer. I can't sit still for that much tv. I'm not not much of a crafter. I'm single. I have no kids. At the end of most days, it's just me and the words.
As far as things go, that doesn't suck.
posted by thivaia at 6:33 AM on November 29, 2020 [11 favorites]
But for real, there are so many books, so, so many books I can't wait to read, so many good ones. My to-read list is frightening and my nightstand is collapsing under the weight of the pile, so much so that I've deliberately been moseying down a bit of a poetry/novella alleyway for a bit because they're literally (but absolutely not figuratively) lighter. My taste for Tomes--in part, because they take longer--has started to exact a bodily toll (earlier this year the one-two punch of The Power Broker and Ducks, Newburyport basically left me with nerve damage and yes, I realize that is yet another solid argument for the tablet. Maybe I'll try again? Third time's the charm?). I can read up to three books at a time (I learned this as a undergraduate, when I regularly had semesters where I'd have something like 30-40 books to get through). It's not so hard, not so different than switching between channels. Easier if you can connect the books thematically or find ways they can interplay off each other. But I don't necessarily like to do it that way.
I'm a bit sore at the suggestion that I get less out of books than slower readers because I love words and books and reading more than just about anything in the world. I am absorbed into them. I can forget how and who and where and when I am. Some of the best, most meaningful things I've ever read, I have flown through, ravenous, insatiable, trying to force myself to slow down because I don't want it to end. I was a lit major. I still mostly read with a pen and horrify at least half the people I know with the marginalia (I've been trying post-its, for, what my friend Patrick kinda accurately used to call my "illegible call and response moments "with text). I like to connect things when I'm reading non-fiction (and fiction, to be honest). When I'm reading fiction, I like to think about the mechanics of the way the words work on the page. I write for a living. I still, whether it's sane, aspire to write for a living. I like to pull back the curtain a bit and trying to figure out the how the writers I like do it.And yet even with all that, I laugh out loud. I jump in my seat. I get chills. I cry when I read, sometimes over something so stupid effete as the elegance of a well-turned phrase, sometimes because . . . well, I recently reread Giovanni's Room, for example, and it still ruins me. Sometimes I get turned on when I'm reading. And what I'll say about it is it's odd what turns me on in books (fun fact: it's not sex, it's rarely even about sex. For me, the sexiest parts of books are the verbs and ideas and and descriptions at once so evocative and granular you can feel them on your skin and oh yeah, the "God, I wish someone would fucking talk to me like that" dialogue).
I have a goodreads account I think about deleting all the time, in part, because it encourages me to catalog everything I've read and keep track of "reading goals" whatever that means. I keep it because I'm curious about what my friends read and it's not terrible for organizing my library (which will probably, eventually bury me Collyer brothers style if I do no just cowgirl up and buy a goddamn tablet, I KNOW, MOM). I don't read a lot because I want to read performatively. I read because I don't know what else to do. I'm not a gamer. I can't sit still for that much tv. I'm not not much of a crafter. I'm single. I have no kids. At the end of most days, it's just me and the words.
As far as things go, that doesn't suck.
posted by thivaia at 6:33 AM on November 29, 2020 [11 favorites]
Not only do I read very fast (I do), but in preparation for dick measuring contests, I have fashioned a phallus made from the pages of the most insufferably smug books of literary criticism I could find. Huzzah!
posted by triage_lazarus at 6:40 AM on November 29, 2020 [6 favorites]
posted by triage_lazarus at 6:40 AM on November 29, 2020 [6 favorites]
Down to reheating something in a microwave for 2 minutes and 22 seconds because pushing the same button three times is quicker.
I think holding this up as some kind of execrable tech-bro mannerism is silly. There's nothing to object to here – it's perfectly fine to microwave things in increments of less than 10 seconds, and no one is missing out by not spending quality time with their microwave. People learn to optimize repetitive tasks, it's how we get better at things!
posted by oulipian at 7:02 AM on November 29, 2020 [1 favorite]
I think holding this up as some kind of execrable tech-bro mannerism is silly. There's nothing to object to here – it's perfectly fine to microwave things in increments of less than 10 seconds, and no one is missing out by not spending quality time with their microwave. People learn to optimize repetitive tasks, it's how we get better at things!
posted by oulipian at 7:02 AM on November 29, 2020 [1 favorite]
> I'm a little surprised to hear you say tech sector, because premature optimization has been called the root of all evil by Knuth, you'd think they'd have a better chance of avoiding that sort of behavior.
Knuth also prescribes copious, explanatory code commenting, which in today's tech sector is less popular than business suits.
Modern best practices have repudiated a lot of Knuth's. Not necessarily for the better, and probably simply because extra effort on unsexy tasks aren't fun, don't help deadlines, and don't help you land your next gig.
posted by at by at 8:24 AM on November 29, 2020
Knuth also prescribes copious, explanatory code commenting, which in today's tech sector is less popular than business suits.
Modern best practices have repudiated a lot of Knuth's. Not necessarily for the better, and probably simply because extra effort on unsexy tasks aren't fun, don't help deadlines, and don't help you land your next gig.
posted by at by at 8:24 AM on November 29, 2020
I read a lot of books - but I have no clue how fast I read. It has literally never occurred to me to try and read faster. If anything, I tend to qualify the books themselves as 'quick' or 'slow.' It really depends on the subject matter and the author.
Generally, I'm reading non-fiction for a professional or personal interests. This is a mix of economics, history, philosophy, neuroscience, and business books. Business books are generally 'quick' reads and are structured in such a way that they deliver only a handful of concepts and then slam them into the reader's brain through repetition. Economics and philosophy are 'slow' reads with complex concepts that build on one another and require a lot of rereading of sections.
I could care less how many books I can read, what I'm trying to get to are useful insights I can apply in my life and thinking. If someone who shares that goal and achieve that through some speed-reading strategy, good for them!
posted by elwoodwiles at 8:42 AM on November 29, 2020
Generally, I'm reading non-fiction for a professional or personal interests. This is a mix of economics, history, philosophy, neuroscience, and business books. Business books are generally 'quick' reads and are structured in such a way that they deliver only a handful of concepts and then slam them into the reader's brain through repetition. Economics and philosophy are 'slow' reads with complex concepts that build on one another and require a lot of rereading of sections.
I could care less how many books I can read, what I'm trying to get to are useful insights I can apply in my life and thinking. If someone who shares that goal and achieve that through some speed-reading strategy, good for them!
posted by elwoodwiles at 8:42 AM on November 29, 2020
I like what this article has to say about the pressures to be productive and the absurdity of speed reading as something people feel they have to do. I don't like all the scoffing and condescending about people who read "too fast" for your arbitrary metrics. I read more than 52 books a year, which I guess is speed reading according to the article. Sorry, but I was a chronically ill kid with no video games or cable TV. Reading is the only thing I did for like, a decade. Practice anything long enough and you'll get quicker at it.
This idea that if you read faster you akshully suck at reading is absurd. If you practice knitting you'll get faster at it. People who speed knit aren't "worse" at knitting because they aren't "lingering" over the process. I linger plenty over books, and still read them twice as fast as your average person. I'm literally just faster at understanding printed words than your average person and that's not... a slight against anyone? It's fine if you read slower. I process verbal speech slower than you! People are faster and slower at different things (cooking, talking, running, folding clothes, whatever) and it's fine!
I know why people attach so much value to how fast they read, but maybe you can defend your slower reading speed without insisting that people who read faster than you are secretly bad at it. Talk about how forcing yourself to read faster for the numbers or productivity points is bad, but there's a hell of a lot of people who read for its own sake and just happen to be very fast at it.
I really wish people would knock it off, and the best way to start is to abolish the "every book I read this year" comprehensive list tradition.
I'm sorry this makes you feel bad, and people can definitely use this in dick-measuring ways, but assuming that the entire tradition is like that seems like projection to me. I post the list of books I read this year so that my friends can browse and say, "Oh hey, I read that one, let's chat about it!" or "I've been meaning to read that one, what did you think?" And also because summing up your year is just fun. People post "here's everything I knit this year" and "here's all the movies I've watched" and "here's how many miles I ran this year" and all sorts of things to sum of their year. That's not inherently shaming people for not doing those things, everyone has different hobbies and spends their time differently. I have multiple friends who have read more than 100 books this year. If they want to celebrate that fact at the end of this year, I will celebrate with them, because it doesn't have to make me feel bad about my own accomplishments.
I stopped using the goodreads yearly reading goal thingie because of this distinction.
For me, the goal of reading lots of books is to be exposed to lots of different stories and ideas. My to-read list is 2k+ books long because if a book has a vaguely interesting premise I want to see how the author explores the concept. The accomplishment has nothing to do with page numbers, for me. This doesn't mean I only read short story collections and never read 500 page books--some ideas can only be fully expressed that way. But the metric for me is whether I've been spending time with a bunch of different ideas that year. It's not perfect--obviously I could (and have) just read 13 books in the same series, but even then it's a different story and that's what matters to me more than the length.
But I do understand the pressure of ticking that number up because monkey brain. So I just set my goal as 12 and then tick it up a little higher every time I blow past it. That way I always have a bit of a goal, but I'm always like, "I have plenty of time left in the year, I can read whatever I want!" So I never feel pressured to only read short things. Once we hit November I stop ticking up the goal and call the rest bonus. Dunno if that'd work for anyone else, but that's how I manage. I stopped my reading goal at 50 and am at 56 books right now.
posted by brook horse at 9:46 AM on November 29, 2020 [11 favorites]
This idea that if you read faster you akshully suck at reading is absurd. If you practice knitting you'll get faster at it. People who speed knit aren't "worse" at knitting because they aren't "lingering" over the process. I linger plenty over books, and still read them twice as fast as your average person. I'm literally just faster at understanding printed words than your average person and that's not... a slight against anyone? It's fine if you read slower. I process verbal speech slower than you! People are faster and slower at different things (cooking, talking, running, folding clothes, whatever) and it's fine!
I know why people attach so much value to how fast they read, but maybe you can defend your slower reading speed without insisting that people who read faster than you are secretly bad at it. Talk about how forcing yourself to read faster for the numbers or productivity points is bad, but there's a hell of a lot of people who read for its own sake and just happen to be very fast at it.
I really wish people would knock it off, and the best way to start is to abolish the "every book I read this year" comprehensive list tradition.
I'm sorry this makes you feel bad, and people can definitely use this in dick-measuring ways, but assuming that the entire tradition is like that seems like projection to me. I post the list of books I read this year so that my friends can browse and say, "Oh hey, I read that one, let's chat about it!" or "I've been meaning to read that one, what did you think?" And also because summing up your year is just fun. People post "here's everything I knit this year" and "here's all the movies I've watched" and "here's how many miles I ran this year" and all sorts of things to sum of their year. That's not inherently shaming people for not doing those things, everyone has different hobbies and spends their time differently. I have multiple friends who have read more than 100 books this year. If they want to celebrate that fact at the end of this year, I will celebrate with them, because it doesn't have to make me feel bad about my own accomplishments.
I stopped using the goodreads yearly reading goal thingie because of this distinction.
For me, the goal of reading lots of books is to be exposed to lots of different stories and ideas. My to-read list is 2k+ books long because if a book has a vaguely interesting premise I want to see how the author explores the concept. The accomplishment has nothing to do with page numbers, for me. This doesn't mean I only read short story collections and never read 500 page books--some ideas can only be fully expressed that way. But the metric for me is whether I've been spending time with a bunch of different ideas that year. It's not perfect--obviously I could (and have) just read 13 books in the same series, but even then it's a different story and that's what matters to me more than the length.
But I do understand the pressure of ticking that number up because monkey brain. So I just set my goal as 12 and then tick it up a little higher every time I blow past it. That way I always have a bit of a goal, but I'm always like, "I have plenty of time left in the year, I can read whatever I want!" So I never feel pressured to only read short things. Once we hit November I stop ticking up the goal and call the rest bonus. Dunno if that'd work for anyone else, but that's how I manage. I stopped my reading goal at 50 and am at 56 books right now.
posted by brook horse at 9:46 AM on November 29, 2020 [11 favorites]
In a time when people fear for the future of recreational reading at all, I don't think it's sustainable to object both to people who read fewer books than you and also to people who read more books than you.
posted by one for the books at 10:22 AM on November 29, 2020 [11 favorites]
posted by one for the books at 10:22 AM on November 29, 2020 [11 favorites]
For a society spellbound by the graven images of efficiency and industry, productivity and progress, reading for its own sake is dysfunctional. All the more reason to do it.
Thanks for the post, OP. After reading the thread, I expected one type of article but read a different one. The article certainly was not shaming speedy readers, nor slow ones. May we all read, at our own pace, in peace and harmony.
posted by Bella Donna at 10:44 AM on November 29, 2020 [3 favorites]
Thanks for the post, OP. After reading the thread, I expected one type of article but read a different one. The article certainly was not shaming speedy readers, nor slow ones. May we all read, at our own pace, in peace and harmony.
posted by Bella Donna at 10:44 AM on November 29, 2020 [3 favorites]
Yeah, add me to the crowd of people who just read very fast. And yes, it’s largely genre fiction because that’s what I enjoy, but no, I don’t feel like I’m somehow missing out. I also reread a book if I want to come home to it in a cozy way.
In a way I think this thread is also a product of capitalism, in that it has us arguing about superiority and putting other people and their ways down, in an unconscious reflection of the competitive, not cooperative, nature of work.
posted by corb at 10:49 AM on November 29, 2020 [7 favorites]
In a way I think this thread is also a product of capitalism, in that it has us arguing about superiority and putting other people and their ways down, in an unconscious reflection of the competitive, not cooperative, nature of work.
posted by corb at 10:49 AM on November 29, 2020 [7 favorites]
I'm surprised to see people picking up a criticism of speed reading versus what I saw as a criticism of a culture of constant personal improvement in order to somehow become a more efficient cog.
I am a fairly quick reader, but also someone who is a bit neurotic and totally prone to the kinds of worrying that drives one to look for ways to improve, and so I have been there in the sense of having started out a year thinking I should read more books this year, only to be faced with the reality that somehow an activity I enjoyed a lot previously has ceased to be something I ever seem to find time to do. In that context the bit that stands out to me is:
posted by pulposus at 10:52 AM on November 29, 2020 [2 favorites]
I am a fairly quick reader, but also someone who is a bit neurotic and totally prone to the kinds of worrying that drives one to look for ways to improve, and so I have been there in the sense of having started out a year thinking I should read more books this year, only to be faced with the reality that somehow an activity I enjoyed a lot previously has ceased to be something I ever seem to find time to do. In that context the bit that stands out to me is:
The spare time of the masses in such a society is not really spare time at all, he writes, but merely a respite that “serves only to reproduce their working capacity.” In other words, under America’s modern culture of work, rest from work is really just rest for work.I don't really read many books anymore, instead I read articles and blog posts, and it's interesting to think about how I can think of so many things to do and read that are about getting better at something I'm paid to do, and how there never seems to be the time to invest in just finding things to read for the sake of enjoyable reading.
posted by pulposus at 10:52 AM on November 29, 2020 [2 favorites]
The great thing about reading texts is that we all have the freedom to go as fast or as slow as we like, and also the freedom to pause, skim, skip, go-back, re-read, drop, or stop-and-throw-against-wall.
I can read fairly fast when I feel like it. I can get through several books a week if I'm not working merely by ignoring everything else in life and using my special powers of super-procrastination.
One thing I cannot do is make a boring YT video lecturer get to the goddamn point fast enough. It makes me tear my hair out.
posted by ovvl at 11:49 AM on November 29, 2020 [7 favorites]
I can read fairly fast when I feel like it. I can get through several books a week if I'm not working merely by ignoring everything else in life and using my special powers of super-procrastination.
One thing I cannot do is make a boring YT video lecturer get to the goddamn point fast enough. It makes me tear my hair out.
posted by ovvl at 11:49 AM on November 29, 2020 [7 favorites]
Just for the sake of anecdote, I've probably only read maybe 20 books this year, despite the fact that I can finish a 500-page book in 5 hours. It just happened to be 5 hours divided by the 15 minutes it takes for me to start reading and then fall asleep. I've finished probably 40 audiobooks too, because at least I can listen while I'm doing other stuff, but still. If I had nothing to do BUT read, then sure, I could whomp out a doorstop a day.
For audiobooks, I listen to them at 1x speed, unless someone's narration is genuinely improved by speeding it up. I really have been enjoying audiobooks BECAUSE they take longer to finish (someone said above that they won't buy a book over 9 hours? Shit, the longer the better for me) and because it's an even more immersive experience than reading print.
I love to read. It's my favorite thing to do in the world. Which is why the whole "well, you read it too fast to get into it" theory is such bullshit. Like I'm checking entire series out of the library at once because I just...what? want to prove I can do it the fastest? I'm just sitting on the couch, flipping pages for the fun sound it makes? No, it's because having 10 books I haven't read yet is pure happiness. I'm not watching YOU to judge what you're getting out of your book at 30wpm. I'm assuming you're doing the same thing I'm doing.
posted by Autumnheart at 12:04 PM on November 29, 2020 [2 favorites]
For audiobooks, I listen to them at 1x speed, unless someone's narration is genuinely improved by speeding it up. I really have been enjoying audiobooks BECAUSE they take longer to finish (someone said above that they won't buy a book over 9 hours? Shit, the longer the better for me) and because it's an even more immersive experience than reading print.
I love to read. It's my favorite thing to do in the world. Which is why the whole "well, you read it too fast to get into it" theory is such bullshit. Like I'm checking entire series out of the library at once because I just...what? want to prove I can do it the fastest? I'm just sitting on the couch, flipping pages for the fun sound it makes? No, it's because having 10 books I haven't read yet is pure happiness. I'm not watching YOU to judge what you're getting out of your book at 30wpm. I'm assuming you're doing the same thing I'm doing.
posted by Autumnheart at 12:04 PM on November 29, 2020 [2 favorites]
The problem is in talking about reading in terms of "how fast" or "efficient" one can be at it, as if all books are the same in what it is one would hopefully get out of them and in using books consumed as a metric at all. The whole point of genre fiction, those so called "page turners", for example, is in how they rely on similar structures of plot, theme and character to tell familiar stories. That's why their called "genre fiction".
That mostly means the books are read for how the narrative events unfold, the speed at which one converts letters into words and translates those words into coherent concepts isn't impeded much by any conceptual difficulty as a general goal of the writing. They are written to be read for "fun" and that's great for those who like it. But setting that then as a standard, the speed one can read Dan Brown, as a comparison to the speed one reads Djuna Barnes, or (god help you) Heidegger or Derrida, an medical textbook, poetry, and a host of other things that demand a different kind of understanding and relationship to the text is foolish.
One can process the words in a poem as quickly as in a Dan Brown novel, but reading most poems in that same way is missing the point of what poems are doing in asking for the words and scheme of the poem to carry multiple associations, requiring some reflection to best appreciate. The same goes for many other kinds of writing where reading the words doesn't necessarily lead to understanding the content well. Trying to measure all reading by the same metric of "speed" is ridiculously wrong headed.
The article indeed really isn't about any of this and can be perhaps best summarized by the quote the author selected:
“On Popular Music,” Theodor Adorno observed that within Western industrial society, “A fully concentrated and conscious experience of art is possible only to those whose lives do not put such a strain on them that in their spare time they want relief from both boredom and effort simultaneously.”
While the objections that the essay isn't really treading any new ground are true, this kind of complaint around speed reading courses and the like is old, old news, the dispute over judging what and how people read without considering other ends does point to a consumption based model of appreciation that aligns with a similar end of business-like optimization.
posted by gusottertrout at 1:00 PM on November 29, 2020 [4 favorites]
That mostly means the books are read for how the narrative events unfold, the speed at which one converts letters into words and translates those words into coherent concepts isn't impeded much by any conceptual difficulty as a general goal of the writing. They are written to be read for "fun" and that's great for those who like it. But setting that then as a standard, the speed one can read Dan Brown, as a comparison to the speed one reads Djuna Barnes, or (god help you) Heidegger or Derrida, an medical textbook, poetry, and a host of other things that demand a different kind of understanding and relationship to the text is foolish.
One can process the words in a poem as quickly as in a Dan Brown novel, but reading most poems in that same way is missing the point of what poems are doing in asking for the words and scheme of the poem to carry multiple associations, requiring some reflection to best appreciate. The same goes for many other kinds of writing where reading the words doesn't necessarily lead to understanding the content well. Trying to measure all reading by the same metric of "speed" is ridiculously wrong headed.
The article indeed really isn't about any of this and can be perhaps best summarized by the quote the author selected:
“On Popular Music,” Theodor Adorno observed that within Western industrial society, “A fully concentrated and conscious experience of art is possible only to those whose lives do not put such a strain on them that in their spare time they want relief from both boredom and effort simultaneously.”
While the objections that the essay isn't really treading any new ground are true, this kind of complaint around speed reading courses and the like is old, old news, the dispute over judging what and how people read without considering other ends does point to a consumption based model of appreciation that aligns with a similar end of business-like optimization.
posted by gusottertrout at 1:00 PM on November 29, 2020 [4 favorites]
After I learned to read very late by Mefi standards at 9, I needed to read. Before I could read I was a pyromaniac who'd set our house on fire when I was 7 and spent hours every evening which wasn't unbearably hot staring fixedly into a big fire I'd made in our huge fieldstone fireplace. Afterwards I wasn't, but it took decades for me to begin to wonder whether the flicker generated in my eyes by reading words on a page could have substituted for staring into the flames.
However that may be, I read a lot; before I discovered SFF, I read fairy tales, mythology and every animal story in the three libraries I could get to (a very grim experience by the way, since the dramatic tension in almost all those animal stories was generated by neglect and abuse of lovable animals). Then I read all the SFF in the library system (I didn't realize at the time that my beloved librarians made sure those all eventually graced the shelves of my local branch just for my sake!) and had to start buying my own by Jr. High. By the time I graduated from high school I had ~2500 SFF books on the shelves in my bedroom (counting the Ace Doubles as two, but not counting all the magazines) and by looking at card catalogs, determined I'd read about 1500 beyond that. I suppose I must have been reading fairly fast. I remember one late Sunday afternoon during high school coming home from the weekly trip to Jerry's Paperback Exchange with my father, carrying the usual haul of 35-40 books and feeling anxious about two papers due the next day I hadn't started yet -- and then sitting on the couch to read five of those books one after another until midnight, when I began the papers I didn't finish until 4:00 AM.
I still do read quite a bit, though not as fast as I did because of a brain injury, and for the purposes of this comment I count around 400 books in my Internet Archive history for the last 15 months, excluding the 50 or so I didn't finish. About 350 of them SFF by women, which I discovered through the Wikipedia 'Category: Women science fiction and fantasy writers' page.
posted by jamjam at 2:49 PM on November 29, 2020 [3 favorites]
However that may be, I read a lot; before I discovered SFF, I read fairy tales, mythology and every animal story in the three libraries I could get to (a very grim experience by the way, since the dramatic tension in almost all those animal stories was generated by neglect and abuse of lovable animals). Then I read all the SFF in the library system (I didn't realize at the time that my beloved librarians made sure those all eventually graced the shelves of my local branch just for my sake!) and had to start buying my own by Jr. High. By the time I graduated from high school I had ~2500 SFF books on the shelves in my bedroom (counting the Ace Doubles as two, but not counting all the magazines) and by looking at card catalogs, determined I'd read about 1500 beyond that. I suppose I must have been reading fairly fast. I remember one late Sunday afternoon during high school coming home from the weekly trip to Jerry's Paperback Exchange with my father, carrying the usual haul of 35-40 books and feeling anxious about two papers due the next day I hadn't started yet -- and then sitting on the couch to read five of those books one after another until midnight, when I began the papers I didn't finish until 4:00 AM.
I still do read quite a bit, though not as fast as I did because of a brain injury, and for the purposes of this comment I count around 400 books in my Internet Archive history for the last 15 months, excluding the 50 or so I didn't finish. About 350 of them SFF by women, which I discovered through the Wikipedia 'Category: Women science fiction and fantasy writers' page.
posted by jamjam at 2:49 PM on November 29, 2020 [3 favorites]
Of course, this wasn’t always so. I don’t imagine, for instance, that the citizens of ancient Athens — with their rich culture of rhetoric and dialectic, of architecture and geometry — were similarly dragooned by their merchant and martial society to inhale a library’s worth of scrolls within a year.
Maybe not, but can I point you to the Journal of the History of Ideas special issue on Early Modern Information Overload? Or Ann Blair's Too Much to Know Managing Scholarly Information before the Modern Age? You can find plenty of cases of folks complaining that there is too much to read, looking for ways to cope with the pressure.
posted by doctornemo at 3:05 PM on November 29, 2020 [2 favorites]
Maybe not, but can I point you to the Journal of the History of Ideas special issue on Early Modern Information Overload? Or Ann Blair's Too Much to Know Managing Scholarly Information before the Modern Age? You can find plenty of cases of folks complaining that there is too much to read, looking for ways to cope with the pressure.
posted by doctornemo at 3:05 PM on November 29, 2020 [2 favorites]
There's something very late-capitalism-transapocalyptic (and maybe specifically USA-late-etc...) about this need to count, quantify, measure and compare EVERYTHING, even something as personal and non-quantifiable as reading.
posted by signal at 4:36 PM on November 29, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by signal at 4:36 PM on November 29, 2020 [1 favorite]
When I want to hear every word an author wrote, I read it aloud. I take care to pronounce non English names properly, and I laugh a lot, and I get a lot out of literature, I want to know,experience via reading. But for most other written work, the internet of words has left a billion writers thinking, we all want to know about their belly button lint. This is a euphemism for TMI. Recipe writers are the worst, they are followed by almost all newly minted writers who do info prose. It is no wonder speed reading is a thing right now. I don't read about half of all articles in which I have an interest. Maybe Ernest Hemingway had some cherished family recipes I might enjoy reading. I am like the Sargeant Joe Friday of inquiry, "Just the facts."
The monitization of everything, and collection of every thought, however mundane; recording all of them to the Akhashic Record, (what the web that is emerging to be,) I ask, "Why are we interested in making a giant intellectual junk mat of the mundane to fill some giant info pit?" 500,000 years later someone digs it all up, and they ask,"What could barbecue be?"
posted by Oyéah at 5:20 PM on November 29, 2020 [1 favorite]
The monitization of everything, and collection of every thought, however mundane; recording all of them to the Akhashic Record, (what the web that is emerging to be,) I ask, "Why are we interested in making a giant intellectual junk mat of the mundane to fill some giant info pit?" 500,000 years later someone digs it all up, and they ask,"What could barbecue be?"
posted by Oyéah at 5:20 PM on November 29, 2020 [1 favorite]
There's something very late-capitalism
I suspect intellectual oneupsmanship crosses the boundaries of systems of economic organization. Even if you outlawed money, we all have a limited span of life to spend, especially relative to the volume of writing published every year.
posted by pwnguin at 6:52 PM on November 29, 2020 [4 favorites]
I suspect intellectual oneupsmanship crosses the boundaries of systems of economic organization. Even if you outlawed money, we all have a limited span of life to spend, especially relative to the volume of writing published every year.
posted by pwnguin at 6:52 PM on November 29, 2020 [4 favorites]
In a hypothetical anti-capitalist society, there would actually be less "oneupmanship" because there would be a) less writing published but of higher quality because authors aren't compelled to grind out the 99% of what is written crap today, and b) consumers would not be in a social configuration of consuming of volume but rather autonomous and independent intellectual agents who read for quality
Just sayin', there's a whole leftist theory of information out there that neoliberals are oblivious to
Speaking of theories, even the science is on the side of slower reading. Just google and majority of research on reading fluency says that reading fast tends to reduce comprehension. It connects to basic questions about linguistics. And this is empirical, not just personal preferences (which again capitalism likes to make people think these choices are merely individual preferences all equally valid)
posted by polymodus at 2:07 AM on November 30, 2020 [1 favorite]
Just sayin', there's a whole leftist theory of information out there that neoliberals are oblivious to
Speaking of theories, even the science is on the side of slower reading. Just google and majority of research on reading fluency says that reading fast tends to reduce comprehension. It connects to basic questions about linguistics. And this is empirical, not just personal preferences (which again capitalism likes to make people think these choices are merely individual preferences all equally valid)
posted by polymodus at 2:07 AM on November 30, 2020 [1 favorite]
In a hypothetical anti-capitalist society, there would actually be less "oneupmanship" because there would be a) less writing published but of higher quality because authors aren't compelled to grind out the 99% of what is written crap today, and b) consumers would not be in a social configuration of consuming of volume but rather autonomous and independent intellectual agents who read for quality
I'm sorry, but that dream of the intellectual class has never made much sense. It isn't as if even among the intelligentsia there's any real agreement on what is "crap" and given the way art adapts to what has come before and the interests of its creators and time, the very instability of it would make defining "crap" a virtual impossibility as the older generation's ugly becomes the next generations beauty, almost by necessity.
There's a real need for art/writing that speaks to basic emotions and commonality as well as a need for art/writing that seeks to do something "more" or different. Those two strands feed off each other as the avant-garde requires a base of norms to react to or from while mass art picks up ideas and techniques from the avant-garde. A more realistic hope would simply be a better balanced "marketplace" that doesn't push for a monoculture based on marketing and sales.
Authors write as they are able, some aren't so much with the able and never get notice, others may not be particularly gifted in technique but find a concept that captures the imagination, and others still may be gifted in skill and/or concept and wish to suggest something more subtle or complex than the norm or that outright challenges it and those who came before who established those norms, including the arbiters of taste of the intellectual class.
"Crap" ain't going away, the hope is just that spreading the crap over a wider territory of possibility also allows a more diverse harvest as more books find a space to flourish when the audience isn't encouraged to eat the same meal every day.
posted by gusottertrout at 4:26 AM on November 30, 2020 [2 favorites]
I'm sorry, but that dream of the intellectual class has never made much sense. It isn't as if even among the intelligentsia there's any real agreement on what is "crap" and given the way art adapts to what has come before and the interests of its creators and time, the very instability of it would make defining "crap" a virtual impossibility as the older generation's ugly becomes the next generations beauty, almost by necessity.
There's a real need for art/writing that speaks to basic emotions and commonality as well as a need for art/writing that seeks to do something "more" or different. Those two strands feed off each other as the avant-garde requires a base of norms to react to or from while mass art picks up ideas and techniques from the avant-garde. A more realistic hope would simply be a better balanced "marketplace" that doesn't push for a monoculture based on marketing and sales.
Authors write as they are able, some aren't so much with the able and never get notice, others may not be particularly gifted in technique but find a concept that captures the imagination, and others still may be gifted in skill and/or concept and wish to suggest something more subtle or complex than the norm or that outright challenges it and those who came before who established those norms, including the arbiters of taste of the intellectual class.
"Crap" ain't going away, the hope is just that spreading the crap over a wider territory of possibility also allows a more diverse harvest as more books find a space to flourish when the audience isn't encouraged to eat the same meal every day.
posted by gusottertrout at 4:26 AM on November 30, 2020 [2 favorites]
I wasn't actually aware that I read quickly until fairly recently. I thought that reading roughly 60 pages an hour (or up to 100 or so when the type is larger) was average. I knew that I read a fair amount, but I thought that the reason that I was able to read a few hundred books (usually including some light as air noir, some incredibly difficult modernist bullshit, and quite a few things between those two extremes) some years was because I spent hours and hours reading. Then, when I posted my book list in a thread elsewhere where other people were doing so, I was told that I couldn't possibly have read that much, that if I did read that much I must have no life, and that I must have speedread or skimmed and therefore ruined it for myself.
I don't know how to speedread. I can't fathom the notion of not reading the worlds in a book sequentially in the order in which they were printed on the page (unless I'm reading some weird experimental shit in which one is directed to skip around like Hopscotch). I can see the value in having that ability if one is purely trying to take information in order to pass a test. However, I read for the sake of personal enjoyment, and taking in a piece of art as it was intended is necessary for my enjoyment. I guess that I read quickly, but I read at my natural pace. It seems...fine?
It get the impression that some people want a reason to think that people who read a great deal are assholes, whether it be through saying that what they read is light or through saying that they must be missing something. I can't really imagine being that concerned with how much someone else is reading. My head is the only head that I can be inside, but I would reckon that most people read at the speed that comes naturally to them. I don't think that is a problem.
posted by bootlegpop at 4:54 AM on November 30, 2020 [4 favorites]
I don't know how to speedread. I can't fathom the notion of not reading the worlds in a book sequentially in the order in which they were printed on the page (unless I'm reading some weird experimental shit in which one is directed to skip around like Hopscotch). I can see the value in having that ability if one is purely trying to take information in order to pass a test. However, I read for the sake of personal enjoyment, and taking in a piece of art as it was intended is necessary for my enjoyment. I guess that I read quickly, but I read at my natural pace. It seems...fine?
It get the impression that some people want a reason to think that people who read a great deal are assholes, whether it be through saying that what they read is light or through saying that they must be missing something. I can't really imagine being that concerned with how much someone else is reading. My head is the only head that I can be inside, but I would reckon that most people read at the speed that comes naturally to them. I don't think that is a problem.
posted by bootlegpop at 4:54 AM on November 30, 2020 [4 favorites]
I'm not seeing many anecdotes here from people who specifically went out of their way to learn to read faster than their current speed in order to increase their book consumption. Most people seem to say they are naturally fast readers who have gotten faster through incidental rather than deliberate practise.
Those are two very different things in my mind.
I think a solid analogy is walking speed. Most people have a natural pace that was locked in at an early age that can be increased and decreased situationally. To actively work to increase your normal walking speed as a goal to get to places faster does say something about the society and individual where that is considered a valuable investment.
The question has become "how fast did you get there" rather than "where did you go".
posted by slimepuppy at 6:35 AM on November 30, 2020 [1 favorite]
Those are two very different things in my mind.
I think a solid analogy is walking speed. Most people have a natural pace that was locked in at an early age that can be increased and decreased situationally. To actively work to increase your normal walking speed as a goal to get to places faster does say something about the society and individual where that is considered a valuable investment.
The question has become "how fast did you get there" rather than "where did you go".
posted by slimepuppy at 6:35 AM on November 30, 2020 [1 favorite]
I'm not seeing many anecdotes here from people who specifically went out of their way to learn to read faster than their current speed in order to increase their book consumption.
I did, I took a speed reading development course in college (it was super cheap, compared to my other classes, maybe like $150, and had no grades or anything). It was a long time ago, but the slide projector others have mentioned was used, and I think I doubled or tripled my reading speed. I don't really read for fun that much, but I read lots of documents at work, and it definitely helped.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:44 AM on November 30, 2020 [1 favorite]
I did, I took a speed reading development course in college (it was super cheap, compared to my other classes, maybe like $150, and had no grades or anything). It was a long time ago, but the slide projector others have mentioned was used, and I think I doubled or tripled my reading speed. I don't really read for fun that much, but I read lots of documents at work, and it definitely helped.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:44 AM on November 30, 2020 [1 favorite]
. Most people have a natural pace that was locked in at an early age that can be increased and decreased situationally. To actively work to increase your normal walking speed as a goal to get to places faster does say something about the society and individual where that is considered a valuable investment.
Sort of. There are regional walking speeds, and places that are super-car oriented the standard walking speed is very low, since walking is not valued there. So walking speed has been supplanted by car speed and thus highways are built everywhere which get you to the chain store quickly.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:49 AM on November 30, 2020
Sort of. There are regional walking speeds, and places that are super-car oriented the standard walking speed is very low, since walking is not valued there. So walking speed has been supplanted by car speed and thus highways are built everywhere which get you to the chain store quickly.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:49 AM on November 30, 2020
I have nothing new of value to add but the dichotomy of slow v speed reading was dramatized in this episode of Brooklyn 99.
posted by now i'm piste at 9:37 AM on November 30, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by now i'm piste at 9:37 AM on November 30, 2020 [2 favorites]
I'm not seeing many anecdotes here from people who specifically went out of their way to learn to read faster than their current speed in order to increase their book consumption.
I did. I've liked reading since I could do it, and for the longest time I had enough free time to read anything I wanted. By high-school the required reading was eating into my recreational reading time and by senior year I barely had time to read outside of class assignments.
I decided to take some speed reading classes.
Before the training my reading speed for the average fiction (novels, science fiction, stuff like that) was around 65 pages per hour, for books where I really wanted to enjoy the language or understand a new subject it would be anywhere from 30 to 4 pages per hour.
After the training I could read almost twice as fast.
The result was that I did not enjoy my recreational reading as much, I could barely remember dialogue, names, subtle plot. But for assigned reading it was great. Self-help and management type books, about 50% of assigned reading in school. Finding the relevant parts in technical writing or textbooks. I did have to slow down a bit for unfamiliar subjects, but I managed to get very good grades.
Now I have this hybrid technique were I will speed read a few pages of something, and if I find it interesting I go back to my normal reading speed. Now my required reading includes a lot of management type stuff, technical writing on subjects I know well, proposals, ect... I can usually get my reading done during the first 5 minutes of the meeting, and compared to my peers I think I am doing a great job of understanding text.
Now I only need a speed reading class for subtext.
posted by Dr. Curare at 3:16 PM on November 30, 2020 [3 favorites]
I did. I've liked reading since I could do it, and for the longest time I had enough free time to read anything I wanted. By high-school the required reading was eating into my recreational reading time and by senior year I barely had time to read outside of class assignments.
I decided to take some speed reading classes.
Before the training my reading speed for the average fiction (novels, science fiction, stuff like that) was around 65 pages per hour, for books where I really wanted to enjoy the language or understand a new subject it would be anywhere from 30 to 4 pages per hour.
After the training I could read almost twice as fast.
The result was that I did not enjoy my recreational reading as much, I could barely remember dialogue, names, subtle plot. But for assigned reading it was great. Self-help and management type books, about 50% of assigned reading in school. Finding the relevant parts in technical writing or textbooks. I did have to slow down a bit for unfamiliar subjects, but I managed to get very good grades.
Now I have this hybrid technique were I will speed read a few pages of something, and if I find it interesting I go back to my normal reading speed. Now my required reading includes a lot of management type stuff, technical writing on subjects I know well, proposals, ect... I can usually get my reading done during the first 5 minutes of the meeting, and compared to my peers I think I am doing a great job of understanding text.
Now I only need a speed reading class for subtext.
posted by Dr. Curare at 3:16 PM on November 30, 2020 [3 favorites]
In a hypothetical anti-capitalist society, there would actually be less "oneupmanship" because there would be a) less writing published but of higher quality because authors aren't compelled to grind out the 99% of what is written crap today, and b) consumers would not be in a social configuration of consuming of volume but rather autonomous and independent intellectual agents who read for quality
Except, like, a lot of writing is by people who like to hear themselves talk and want to be heard and removing capitalism is not going to change that. Look at comment threads on the internet. Are people writing in them because they're actually sharing something unique and new? Or is it because they want to be a part of the conversation?
As for reading for "quality", plenty of people read "low-quality" things because that's what they like to read. They don't want to wade through whatever latest Marxist tome is out there, they want something light and fluffy and relaxing. It's brain candy. Removing capitalism does not change the desire for brain candy.
posted by Anonymous at 5:00 PM on November 30, 2020
Except, like, a lot of writing is by people who like to hear themselves talk and want to be heard and removing capitalism is not going to change that. Look at comment threads on the internet. Are people writing in them because they're actually sharing something unique and new? Or is it because they want to be a part of the conversation?
As for reading for "quality", plenty of people read "low-quality" things because that's what they like to read. They don't want to wade through whatever latest Marxist tome is out there, they want something light and fluffy and relaxing. It's brain candy. Removing capitalism does not change the desire for brain candy.
posted by Anonymous at 5:00 PM on November 30, 2020
I still mostly read with a pen and horrify at least half the people I know with the marginalia (I've been trying post-its, for, what my friend Patrick kinda accurately used to call my "illegible call and response moments "with text).
A tablet would also solve this.
a) less writing published but of higher quality because authors aren't compelled to grind out the 99% of what is written crap today,
Have you spent much time reading fanfiction?
posted by bashing rocks together at 5:50 PM on November 30, 2020
A tablet would also solve this.
a) less writing published but of higher quality because authors aren't compelled to grind out the 99% of what is written crap today,
Have you spent much time reading fanfiction?
posted by bashing rocks together at 5:50 PM on November 30, 2020
a) less writing published but of higher quality because authors aren't compelled to grind out the 99% of what is written crap today
Setting aside the possibility that more leisure time means more authors not fewer, is the implication here that we will have less science and fewer advances in medicine? Or is our hypthothetical anti-capitalist state starting from an assumption that death has become optional?
posted by pwnguin at 7:52 PM on November 30, 2020 [1 favorite]
Setting aside the possibility that more leisure time means more authors not fewer, is the implication here that we will have less science and fewer advances in medicine? Or is our hypthothetical anti-capitalist state starting from an assumption that death has become optional?
posted by pwnguin at 7:52 PM on November 30, 2020 [1 favorite]
Yeah I wanna really drive home that fanfiction point for a bit.
1. A quick Google query says there's over 6 million works on ao3, not counting other major hosting sites like fanfiction.net and wattpad
2. A quick sort by length gives me the longest fic on ao3 at 4.9 million words length. I asked for fic longer than 100,000 word and got over 56,000 results so if we wildly round down all the million word fics and ignore the 5.95 million fics shorter than 100k we've still got 56,000,000,000 words of writing. All of this writing was done for free and has no relation to capitalist society
3. I was going to make this comment earlier, the discussion moved on, and now I'll make this comment again. Someone on tumblr observed that dance and making up little songs about what you're doing and art are just human things. They're just things humans do from young ages with no incentives applied. So is writing. So is reading. The entire problem with this thread is trying to moralize a normal human behavior, like trying to say only people who sing in perfect pitch understand the true joys of music.
4. Your wonderful high quality reading utopia is not achieved by writers writing less but better, since not only is that not what they will do (see fanfiction) but also not how quality is achieved (see studies on quantity over quality for improvements in output). All you're saying is you want publishers to stop what they're doing now, publishing things people like to read, so that they can instead publish only the things you/the gatekeepers judge to be "high quality" enough to be worthy of consumption.
5. I, personally, do not like your vision of the no capitalism all "low quality" books purged forever future. At all. It horrifies me.
Also, I went looking for the research you claim is out there with a quick Google and did not find something to support that people who naturally read fast comprehend less than people who read slower (obviously any person reading faster than their usual pace is increasingly "skimming" and comprehension drops). I've done reading speed + comprehension tests so my personal anecdotal experience does not match up with your claims.
But yes, yes, surely people who do things differently are doing things wrong. No other possible explanation, no neurodivergence exists, all humans are the same exact model of person just some are doing it wrong and some aren't.
posted by Cozybee at 7:56 PM on November 30, 2020 [7 favorites]
1. A quick Google query says there's over 6 million works on ao3, not counting other major hosting sites like fanfiction.net and wattpad
2. A quick sort by length gives me the longest fic on ao3 at 4.9 million words length. I asked for fic longer than 100,000 word and got over 56,000 results so if we wildly round down all the million word fics and ignore the 5.95 million fics shorter than 100k we've still got 56,000,000,000 words of writing. All of this writing was done for free and has no relation to capitalist society
3. I was going to make this comment earlier, the discussion moved on, and now I'll make this comment again. Someone on tumblr observed that dance and making up little songs about what you're doing and art are just human things. They're just things humans do from young ages with no incentives applied. So is writing. So is reading. The entire problem with this thread is trying to moralize a normal human behavior, like trying to say only people who sing in perfect pitch understand the true joys of music.
4. Your wonderful high quality reading utopia is not achieved by writers writing less but better, since not only is that not what they will do (see fanfiction) but also not how quality is achieved (see studies on quantity over quality for improvements in output). All you're saying is you want publishers to stop what they're doing now, publishing things people like to read, so that they can instead publish only the things you/the gatekeepers judge to be "high quality" enough to be worthy of consumption.
5. I, personally, do not like your vision of the no capitalism all "low quality" books purged forever future. At all. It horrifies me.
Also, I went looking for the research you claim is out there with a quick Google and did not find something to support that people who naturally read fast comprehend less than people who read slower (obviously any person reading faster than their usual pace is increasingly "skimming" and comprehension drops). I've done reading speed + comprehension tests so my personal anecdotal experience does not match up with your claims.
But yes, yes, surely people who do things differently are doing things wrong. No other possible explanation, no neurodivergence exists, all humans are the same exact model of person just some are doing it wrong and some aren't.
posted by Cozybee at 7:56 PM on November 30, 2020 [7 favorites]
Any improvement in the quality of literature in some utopian future would a matter of absolute volume - not less bad writing, but more amateur writing overall, with an accompanying increase in writing that works for any given person.
posted by sagc at 8:41 PM on November 30, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by sagc at 8:41 PM on November 30, 2020 [1 favorite]
That Emerson quote drives me crazy:
"The great poet makes us feel our own wealth, and then we think less of his compositions. His best communication to our mind is to teach us to despise all he has done. "
Despise? wtf? I don't lionize or worship the writers I like, so neither am I going to despise them.
The "wealth" that a great book reveals is in you? Really? Maybe to a narcissist.
posted by storybored at 9:55 PM on November 30, 2020
"The great poet makes us feel our own wealth, and then we think less of his compositions. His best communication to our mind is to teach us to despise all he has done. "
Despise? wtf? I don't lionize or worship the writers I like, so neither am I going to despise them.
The "wealth" that a great book reveals is in you? Really? Maybe to a narcissist.
posted by storybored at 9:55 PM on November 30, 2020
That Emerson quote drives me crazy:
"The great poet makes us feel our own wealth, and then we think less of his compositions. His best communication to our mind is to teach us to despise all he has done. "
Despise? wtf? I don't lionize or worship the writers I like, so neither am I going to despise them.
The "wealth" that a great book reveals is in you? Really? Maybe to a narcissist.
My goodness, that's a strong reaction. I guess it just goes to show what a great writer Emerson was.
posted by gusottertrout at 11:04 PM on November 30, 2020 [4 favorites]
"The great poet makes us feel our own wealth, and then we think less of his compositions. His best communication to our mind is to teach us to despise all he has done. "
Despise? wtf? I don't lionize or worship the writers I like, so neither am I going to despise them.
The "wealth" that a great book reveals is in you? Really? Maybe to a narcissist.
My goodness, that's a strong reaction. I guess it just goes to show what a great writer Emerson was.
posted by gusottertrout at 11:04 PM on November 30, 2020 [4 favorites]
As a youth, I taught myself to read fast to devour the Victorian tomes I was so fond of—Dickens, Arnold Bennett, Bulwer-Lytton, etc. My favourite book was Of Human Bondage, coming in at over 900 pages. But when I was required to read a book that was not of interest to me. such as The Deerslayer, I turned to Classics Illustrated comics which delivered a concise digest of such books, alowing me to get back to reading Jane Austen.
posted by a humble nudibranch at 1:53 AM on December 1, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by a humble nudibranch at 1:53 AM on December 1, 2020 [1 favorite]
Speaking of theories, even the science is on the side of slower reading. Just google and majority of research on reading fluency says that reading fast tends to reduce comprehension. It connects to basic questions about linguistics. And this is empirical, not just personal preferences (which again capitalism likes to make people think these choices are merely individual preferences all equally valid)
I would like to see these studies that control for people's natural reading speed before I assume that faster readers don't comprehend as well.
I think I'm an average reading speed for people who read, as I notice that I am much much faster than people who don't read as much. But even some people who read alot are slow readers. I have a friend that I went on a week-long beach vacation with, me taking a book on my kindle that said 24 hours to read, her with a maybe 200 page book. I finished mine and downloaded another by the middle of the week (looooots of reading time at the beach that week!), she finished hers the day before the last day. I envy and pity her at the same time: she really gets to spend alot of time with a book, but there's so many books I would never read if it took me that long.
posted by LizBoBiz at 2:52 AM on December 1, 2020
I would like to see these studies that control for people's natural reading speed before I assume that faster readers don't comprehend as well.
I think I'm an average reading speed for people who read, as I notice that I am much much faster than people who don't read as much. But even some people who read alot are slow readers. I have a friend that I went on a week-long beach vacation with, me taking a book on my kindle that said 24 hours to read, her with a maybe 200 page book. I finished mine and downloaded another by the middle of the week (looooots of reading time at the beach that week!), she finished hers the day before the last day. I envy and pity her at the same time: she really gets to spend alot of time with a book, but there's so many books I would never read if it took me that long.
posted by LizBoBiz at 2:52 AM on December 1, 2020
I started this comment and then deleted it since it didn't seem worth the effort to respond to just the one comment. However, since other people have expressed interest, I'll give it a go.
Extensive Reading: Speed and Comprehension (Timothy, 2001)
I did find this nice review that suggests most speed reading classes and technologies are not helpful:
So Much to Read, So Little Time: How Do We Read, and Can Speed Reading Help? (Rayner, Schotter, & Masson, 2016).
Also, I noticed this paragraph:
Btw, I've been formally tested by a neuropsychologist, and at 16 my reading rate was 90th percentile, while my comprehension was in the high average range. So while reading rate and comprehension don't necessarily increase linearly with each other, my comprehension certainly didn't suffer from my speed.
posted by brook horse at 7:30 AM on December 1, 2020 [6 favorites]
Extensive Reading: Speed and Comprehension (Timothy, 2001)
Measured both reading speeds and comprehension in two groups of learners exposed to intensive and extensive reading programs. The extensive group was exposed to a regime of graded readers, while the intensive group studied short texts followed by comprehension questions. Results indicate that subjects exposed to extensive reading achieved both significantly faster reading speeds and significantly higher scores on measures of reading comprehension.The Effect of Speed Reading Strategies on Developing Reading Comprehension among the 2nd Secondary Students in English Language (Abdelrahman & Bsharah, 2014)
This study aimed to find the effect of speed reading strategies on developing reading comprehension among second secondary literary stream students in English language. The sample of the study consists of (42) students assigned into two groups who were chosen randomly from schools, a controlled group (21) students, and an experimental (21) students trained on speed reading strategies during the academic year 2013/2014. The study used a training material, pre and post reading comprehension tests were administrated (Rababa'h, 1991). T. test results revealed that there were significant differences at (a = 0.05) among the students' means in favor of the experimental group. In the light of the results, it is recommended that teachers should train students extensively on the use of speed reading strategies.Increasing first graders' reading accuracy and comprehension by accelerating their reading rates (Breznitz, 1987)
I carried out four experiments to determine the effects on decoding mistakes and comprehension of test passages at fastest and slowest reading rates. The subjects of the first three studies were 161 Israeli first graders, and those of the last experiment were 61 American first graders reading English. Analysis of reading rates obtained during a self-paced condition provided the base rates for each subject. I hypothesized that because of the constraints of short-term memory, requiring subjects to maintain their own maximal oral reading rates would result in improvements in both reading accuracy and comprehension. When presented with the text at their maximal normal reading rates, subjects averaged fewer reading errors and higher comprehension scores than in the self-paced conditions. By contrast, when the text was presented at the slowest reading rates, subjects' decoding accuracy improved, but their comprehension decreased significantly. In one of the experiments, the text contained deliberate letter-substitution errors. Increased reading rate once more reduced the overall errors and increased comprehension. In addition, the deliberate mistakes were more frequently corrected to normal words than in the self-paced condition.There's more, but I'm tired and you can search Google scholar (not just Google) yourself for "reading rate comprehension." There are some mixed results which showed in some conditions, comprehension is worse with increased speed (predominantly either in 1) an assessment context where participants feel pressured, or 2) when prosody is poor). But the "majority" of research does not say that slower reading rate is better for comprehension.
I did find this nice review that suggests most speed reading classes and technologies are not helpful:
So Much to Read, So Little Time: How Do We Read, and Can Speed Reading Help? (Rayner, Schotter, & Masson, 2016).
The prospect of speed reading—reading at an increased speed without any loss of comprehension—has undeniable appeal. Speed reading has been an intriguing concept for decades, at least since Evelyn Wood introduced her Reading Dynamics training program in 1959. It has recently increased in popularity, with speed-reading apps and technologies being introduced for smartphones and digital devices. The current article reviews what the scientific community knows about the reading process—a great deal—and discusses the implications of the research findings for potential students of speed-reading training programs or purchasers of speed-reading apps. The research shows that there is a trade-off between speed and accuracy. It is unlikely that readers will be able to double or triple their reading speeds (e.g., from around 250 to 500–750 words per minute) while still being able to understand the text as well as if they read at normal speed. If a thorough understanding of the text is not the reader’s goal, then speed reading or skimming the text will allow the reader to get through it faster with moderate comprehension. The way to maintain high comprehension and get through text faster is to practice reading and to become a more skilled language user (e.g., through increased vocabulary). This is because language skill is at the heart of reading speed.The conclusion is not that reading faster decreases comprehension, but that most speed reading techniques and technologies do. However, if you read a lot, you will get faster and still retain comprehension. The argument is not "read slower" but "if you want to read faster and still comprehend text, read a lot, don't rely on these fancy tricks."
Also, I noticed this paragraph:
In many other situations, however, it will be necessary to slow down to a normal pace in order to achieve good comprehension. Moreover, you may need to reread parts of the text to ensure a proper understanding of what was written. Bear in mind, however, that a normal pace for most readers is 200 to 400 wpm. This is faster than we normally gain information through listening, and pretty good for most purposes.My reading speed tests around 425, depending on the text. Assuming 90k for the average book, that's 3.5 hours a book. Reading 52 books a year is eminently possible at that speed. I am sure most of you spend 3.5 hours a week on some other hobby or social activity. For me all this takes is half an hour before bed every night. Yet in this article and comments, 52 books a year is framed as this impossible achievement, you MUST be reading way too fast! Well, no, I'm reading about twice as fast as your average reader but that's still perfectly within the "normal" range. I suspect most of the people in this thread fall in that range, and people who read slower think that "reads twice as fast as me" means "speed reading and not taking anything in" when that's not the case. Take a look at the distribution graph in this study--notice how it tops out at around 400, there's nothing, and then it jumps to 600? I suspect the 600 are trained speed readers, and we can wonder about their actual comprehension (though I didn't find any research on this group in specific), but there's nothing to suggest that up people up to around that 400 mark have poorer comprehension.
Btw, I've been formally tested by a neuropsychologist, and at 16 my reading rate was 90th percentile, while my comprehension was in the high average range. So while reading rate and comprehension don't necessarily increase linearly with each other, my comprehension certainly didn't suffer from my speed.
posted by brook horse at 7:30 AM on December 1, 2020 [6 favorites]
If I spent the time I spend every day reading random shit on the internet reading books instead I’d be getting through 150 books a year. I feel like I’m being conservative in this estimate, honestly.
posted by atoxyl at 2:27 PM on December 1, 2020 [10 favorites]
posted by atoxyl at 2:27 PM on December 1, 2020 [10 favorites]
If I spent the time I spend every day reading random shit on the internet reading books instead I’d be getting through 150 books a year.
I took Facebook off my phone and the number of books I read in a year roughly doubled.
posted by joannemerriam at 10:31 PM on December 3, 2020 [4 favorites]
I took Facebook off my phone and the number of books I read in a year roughly doubled.
posted by joannemerriam at 10:31 PM on December 3, 2020 [4 favorites]
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