Regarding the images vs. words debate, while authors often do create powerful images, the strength of writing over more visual media is to create a simulacrum of lived experience, and our experience is not solely visual, nor even solely sensory. Most books devote as many or more words to thoughts and/or dialogue than description and observable events. Just what are you "seeing" when a character is considering his or her relationship to someone else in the story and how it will impact a decision?
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Originally Posted by DiapDealer
Long story short: I don't take any pleasure in purposely reading a book at a pace slower than I could comfortably be reading it at.
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I hope I didn't come across in the OP as having planned out how I would read the book. Circumstances and interest in other media were the main factors--I just didn't have a lot of time when I was choosing to read fiction. I would mostly read while waiting for things, which did work out to short sessions with sometimes days between. What I found was that the book didn't suffer on account of the pauses, and in fact became a background element of my life during that time. I wouldn't say I avoided ending the book, but knowing the end was near did have a bittersweet quality. I had a similar experience (though owing more to the book's length) with Knut Hamsun's
The Growth of the Soil.