Reading for speed

It was of special interest to read Terry Teachout’s answer to one of his readers, who’d asked how long it took to read a book:

I don’t know how fast I read, but I can polish off a book of normal length and density in three or four hours, and if absolutely necessary I can read a newly published book and write a thousand-word review of it between Friday night and Monday morning. (On one horrendous occasion I actually read a short book before lunch and filed a review by dinnertime, but that was a special one-time-only favor for an old friend.) Speed reading, if that’s what I do, comes naturally to me: I’ve never taken a course in it. I think I’m glad I read so quickly, but it’s like spelling really well or having perfect pitch, two of my other peculiar endowments—a convenience, nothing more, especially for a working journalist.

It’s occurred to me more than once that I may not be getting as much pleasure out of the books I read as do slower readers. In any case, and perhaps not surprisingly, I’m a reflexive rereader, and my guess is that over the course of my lifetime I’ll probably spend about as many man-hours with my favorite books as a slower reader. If that’s true, it all evens out in the long run.

Recently I’ve been talking to a friend about this very subject, as he marvels at my ability to read as fast as I do. In fact, I probably read even faster than Terry does; as long as I have uninterrupted time, I can usually finish a 400 page (or roughly 100,000 word) book in about 2 to 2.5 hours. If there’s a lot of action and the prose is, shall we say, serviceable, I can go quicker. And even when I consciously slow myself down, it still doesn’t “help”–some months ago I was asked to read a manuscript and check for accuracy on a particular subject, and so, my “editor brain” fully engaged, I had my pencil out and was making notes to myself. In spite of this, I still had the full manuscript read and edited in about 4 hours total.

I’m not sure when I realized I could read more quickly than the average human, but I know I started noticing this around 4th grade or so. As I explained it in a prior conversation, I seem to retain information page by page, instead of word by word or line by line. Though I don’t like to consciously analyze the way I read, I get the sense that I read in a diagonal pattern, down the page and back up, absorbing the contents in nearly one fell swoop. I wonder, too, if this started because I learned to read very early. Though I don’t consciously remember, there are pictures of me avidly reading books from the age of 2 and a half, and I do have vague memories of reading from age 3 onwards. The rest of my family are big readers and there were tons of books around the house. But lots of readers grew up in a similar environment, and most read far more slowly than I do.

Like Terry, the ability to read fast (and interestingly, I do spell rather well and have perfect pitch, too–coincidence?) is a definite advantage, especially since I pay close attention to new releases in the crime fiction world and, of course, have to review about 5 books every month. But am I losing out on a more pleasurable reading experience because I read so quickly? I really don’t know. Because when I do consciously try to slow myself down, it doesn’t work–the dialogue picks up speed, the action moves quickly, and once again, I’m turning the pages as fast as I can…while still retaining as much information as I likely would as a slow reader.

Perhaps the biggest disadvantage to reading as fast as I do is the false illusion that I can read almost everything there is out there. Far from the case: if anything, the more I read, the more I’m acutely aware of how many books I haven’t yet read, and then the inevitable guilt or inadequacy kicks in. But obviously, I can’t read everything; luckily, I can read a good chunk of what has been published in a given year and hope that as I grow older, I’ll be able to dip back into older releases more and more.

So, am I in a tiny minority? How many books a year do most of you read, and why do you think you read the way you do, whether fast or slow?

UPDATE: Of course, some folks have other, more interesting ideas about the subject.