A reader sends me this piece and asks if this is how I read. I wish. According to web software, I only read about 600 words a minute, which is in the "above average, but not particularly impressive" range--though in fairness, I have a hard time taking those tests without thinking about how I'm reading, which makes it impossible to, y'know, read.
As a youngish adult, I read about a book a day, maybe a little more. But over the last few years, things have crept up on me. I spend a lot more time on the web, and going to panels and events than I used to of an evening. I don't always commute via train, which is prime reading time. And for the last few months, I've been in constant moving frenzy. Now I spend my days unpacking and contemplating the placement of approximately 60% more books than a four-room house can hold. Far too many of them are books I've been just about to read for three years; the housemate reports the same. Frankly, there ought to be a law about journalists living together.
The upshot is that since the first of the year, I've actually completed exactly four books: The Billionaire's Vinegar, Diary of a Real Estate Rookie, The Subprime Solution, and Of Human Bondage. By my count, that means I'm on track to read perhaps a hundred books this year. My New Year's Resolution to become better read already looks like a bust. On the other hand, I think I may well complete the expert level in Guitar Hero.
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The article makes it sound like she's not really reading but skimming. "I retain characters more often than plot" i.e. I don't read carefully enough to know what is going on.
To actually count a given reading speed as your true "words per minute" you need to have fairly high comprehension and recall of what you read. She seems to fail on that count.
I speak from personal experience. I took a speed reading class once and got up to stupendous speeds -- but, of course, comprehension suffered so it's hard to say it really counted.
I think Of Human Bondage is the opposite of a guilty pleasure: you think it's going to be like eating your peas. Good for you and all that, but not exactly a pleasure. Then you read it and find out your peas suddenly taste like chocolate!
Otto: Apes don’t read philosophy.
Wanda: Yes they do, Otto, they just don’t understand it.
That's why I want to figure out where I can buy or how I can build these bookshelf staircases. I so need these
http://www.dannykuo.com/
click on "new photos staircase" at the bottom to see what I mean. See the bookshelf at various stages by clicking on the pictures in the right hand corner.
Can't figure out if they will ever be for sale.
One of those bizarre myths that seem to be made for the 21st century, like ESP and Ancient Astronauts was for the middle of the last. The truth is, there is no reputable research that anyone reading 600 wpm or more has anything greater than a comprehension of 75%. And just about everyone reads from 200 to 400 wpm.
Yes, a lot of people claim high speeds and fantastic comprehension, but so far, It Just Ain't So. Usually they usually say something along the lines of reading a 500 page book in x amount of time, and that they understood the material 'just fine'. The problem, of course, is that while the timing is an objective measure, the level of comprehension in these cases is not. Here's an interesting article from Slate:
That last is the key; in my primeval youth, it was easy to read a book a day. I just spent all day doing it. Easy to do on a farm once the chores are done, especially with no electricity. Nowadays? Well, I do a lot of research. But outside of that, I probably read no more than a book or two a week. And that's in bed recreational reading.
Yeah; but how do we explain Tyler Cowan?
Diversity:
I'd point out these things about Tyler:
1. He readily cops to not finishing many books/movies/media.
2. No kids.
3. Lots of travel, plus an occupation with strange time constraints.
I too was a book/a/day reader in my youth. Now, happily stuck in middle age, I don't read nearly as much; there are too many other demands on my time and I'm unwilling to give that time to the plethora of the sloppy writing I used to read happily.
But I also find that my eyesight is dimmer; and that makes reading slower. I prefer to think of this slow down as consumption time -- time to match my reading against the larger body of knowledge and experience that I've built up since I has the leisure (as Scent of Violets had) of reading a book a day between farm chores and school work.
I don't know if I'd call it a bust. You're already probably reading too much. Your noise to signal ratio is probably approaching infinity. That kind of volume means most of what you are reading is probably bullshit.
So, are these speed readers reading Aristotle's Metaphysics? Are they understanding it? I remember as a grad student in philosophy a woman with a background in English joined us, and she said she suddenly had to slow down and read every sentence carefully. She used to just whiz along.
One of the hardest things about teaching law is getting people who got where they are by reading fast to slow down. If you read a statute fast, you'll miss most of what's going on. Probably true about economics, too.
I just went on a 4-day cruise. My wife has always liked cruises; I recently figured out that they're an opportunity for uninterrupted lengthy reading, so now I like them too.
I read J. S. Mill's On Liberty as well as Niall Ferguson's The Ascent of Money. Mill's essay was 128 pages, so I alloted myself 32 pages per day. Spent about 4 hours a day reading those 32 pages: annotating the margins, looking up and thinking about it (and, I admit, staring at bikini clad females by the ship's pool while doing that thinking). Ferguson was easier, and faster -- but not simple, since I have no formal economics education.
Fast reading is fine for simple books. Doesn't work for difficult reading.
A reasonable approach to this would be to admit that some people simply read at a faster pace. This could be the result of a number of factors including formal methods, faster comprehension, larger I.Q. and any number of factors.
People are generally readily willing to admit that they read less as they get older.
Therefore it is completely reasonable to state that any number of people can read upwards of 600 words a minute. To insist that this is impossible doesn't make sense. Whether or not Tyler Cowan is actually finishing the books he's reading is irrelevant to his actual reading rate.
A reasonable approach would be to actually examine the evidence. Which - as I have pointed out - is singularly lacking. If you have any cite for people reading extremely fast and still comprehending everything, by all means, please post it.
Note that I've said nothing about some people simply being faster readers than others, or that people claiming they can read 2,000 wpm are mistaken. The crucial issue is how much is comprehended when reading so fast. It seems that trying to read something like 1,000 wpm cuts 'comprehension' down to 50% or worse.
Weirdly enough with some people, claiming to read extremely fast is some sort of touchstone for them, some basis for pride or 'specialness'. Can't see it myself, but point out that they're likely mistaken, and if not, they're up for some sort of world record if they consent to be tested, and you get all sorts of interesting tantrums.
I am a reasonably fast reader, but I've been paying some attention to my reading speeds and techniques in the past few years.
The harder or more lovely a book is to read, the slower I go. I can easily read 2-3 Regency romances a day, but why bother? It took me about a month to read _The Ancestor's Tale_, which I read while reading and finishing other, easier books on the side.
I *finish* about 100 books a year. I start significantly more than 100. If it isn't worth it, why bother? This attitude is driven by being a mother who also works full-time outside the home--my time is at a premium.
100 books a year ain't chump change when the average American reads about 11.
It depends entirely on what one is reading! If I were to set a goal of reading 2 books/day I could easily do it by picking romances or other "thin" popular books. It would not surprise me if I read these books at a 1000 words/minute and understood 99%.
However, I'm still reading "From Dawn to Decadence" by Jacques Barzun simply because I keep going back and re-reading it. He pack so much into one paragraph, yet propels you to want to know what's in the next one RIGHT NOW.
On the first reading, I get a "big picture" view, on the second reading I understand how a lot of details fit into that big picture and on the third reading I might get some idea how that's meaningful for today.
No telling what I'll get on the fourth reading!
Would this help you then?
Lastly, look at the results from the 2003 Speed Reading World Championships, held in the UK:
Position Entrant Raw WPM Compre-hension EffectiveWPM
1st Anne L. Jones 2284 56.30% 1285
2nd Andrew Havery 1108 56.30% 623
3rd Henry Hopking 1330 45.80% 610
Link: http://www.speed-reading.com/1-Introducing-Memletics-Effective-Speed-Reading/1.asp
There is MORE than ample evidence that people are able to read in EXCESS of 2,000 words a minute and comprehend well over 50% of them.
You asserting the opposite, while providing no evidence to support it, then snapping on me when I point out that it is reasonable to assume people CAN and in fact do read over 2,000 words a minute and are able to comprehend over 50% of them is not reasonable.
Nor fact-based.
However, your counter-claim that people claiming to read fast is some sort of touchstone for pride (all while you're priding yourself on throwing out an arbitrary statistic with no evidence to back itself up) is particularly entertaining.
People can read over 2,000 words a minute. And comprehend well over 50% of what they are reading. Fact.
Since you charged me with finding citations and documentation please feel free to do the same thing on your end for once.
Can I assume a simple admission that you are wrong would be too much to ask?
Don't worry you won't be asked to give one, nor will anyone else call you on your b.s. since I'm roundly hated here.
You feel 100 books a year is a source of shame?
If I read TWO books this year, it will be an indicator that either P.J. O'Rourke or Christopher Buckley is publishing far ahead of their usual schedules.
Frankly, there are precious few books I've gleaned much satisfaction from reading at all since Douglas Adams died.
It's not that I'm an illiterate buffoon. It's that the novel-length tome is an obsolete relic of the day and age when most of the "readers" in society were people of leisure, with little more to fill their days other than thumb their way through the latest Tolstoy hit.
As a working person in the modern world, if I can manage to make time to even just keep up with "Lost" on TV, I consider myself lucky. Reading novels is not something I can realistically fit in my schedule.
And as for reading non-fiction... Well, we've got the Internet now. Why buy cows when there's more free milk available than anybody could ever hope to drink?
John, Violets did cite a Slate article, which seems eminently more reputable than a study on speed reading from speed-reading.com.
Joy, no one thinks you're worse than the average American.
Tara, the fact that you can choose where and how much you will read of a text would seem to appeal to someone with a rigid schedule.
I think Tara is on to something. I still read quite a bit, but find, more often than not, anything that is more than 300 pages usually isn't worth reading. And while I appreciate the fact that sometimes an effort has to be made to wade through a difficult text for purposes of edification, education, and self-improvement, I usually interpret slow reading as a sign that the book in question isn't really that enjoyable, and serious consideration should be given to reading something else.
Megan,
Your readers can tell that you read a lot with only a superficial understanding of the material.
/agree with Tara. Most books now are over-written to the point you almost have to skim. You might enjoy Glen Cook; her's a very sparse writer, esp. the Black Company books.
I try to get through a couple dozen books a year, about 1/3 nonfiction, and that's about all that I find usefully published. A book can sometimes be an egregious waste of time.
Sigh. No John, I'm right. I'm citing a reputable source. You're citing some speed-reading group. Note, btw, that even by their standards, comprehension is waaaay down. And what does my cite say?
None of them could read faster than 600 words per minute and retain more than 75 percent of the information contained in the texts.
Gee, you mean what you posted doesn't contradict what I wrote? Whadda surprise. I suggest in the future that instead of reading for speed, you read for comprehension.
Y'all missed the most amazing part of that post:
"On the other hand, I think I may well complete the expert level in Guitar Hero."
Expert? Are you kidding me? The battles on Expert are frickin impossible. I've been stuck on Slash (from GnR) for months. And I can actually, you know, play guitar.
Megan,
How many hours a day would you spend reading when you were a book or more a day? How about now?
Took some random online tests, and they showed 500-750 wpm with 90% comprehension. Take that with a big grain of salt, of course - they're all trying to sell something, and reading a page is different from reading a book - but still, it seems about right given what I know of my own reading habits.