Reading speed

[tompe]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Can you explain what you mean by "fully experience a book", please?

Well I suppose you can define it from the book or from the person. Maybe easier from a persons point of view relative to reading speed since that definition works here. So you fully experience a book if any other way in how fast you read or how much you think about the book do not give you something extra.

So if you skim or skip sections you obviously do not fully experience the book according to that definition.

A definition from the books perspektive seems harder and maybe more fruitful to do it negatively by enumerate situations were you have not done it. Like you must notice all levels put into the book. But maybe you cannot do that how slowly or carefully you read since you are missing background knowledge pr some other reason. So that definition is not so good for the discussion in this thread.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by speakingtohe

I am perhaps wrong in assuming you feel that those who read faster do not experience the book as well as you do? This is the impression I get and if it is completely untrue I certainly am glad to hear it.

I have friends who read much faster than me and and experience the book in some sense better than me. The only thing I talked is that I believe there is a limit on how fast you can read and still experience the book as well or better then good/competent readers that read it more slowly.

But I am not saying that experience better in that sense is in some universal way better. That all depends on what goal you have and so on. Or depend on what moral system you are using and what that say.

[B-ratz]

Originally Posted by tompe

I have friends who read much faster than me and and experience the book in some sense better than me. The only thing I talked is that I believe there is a limit on how fast you can read and still experience the book as well or better then good/competent readers that read it more slowly.

But I am not saying that experience better in that sense is in some universal way better. That all depends on what goal you have and so on. Or depend on what moral system you are using and what that say.

I think all good books deserve reflection and consideration at the time of reading. Some people can read faster than others, and still reflect and consider as much, just at at quicker pace. I believe the more you reflect and consider the more you WILL get out of a book. I think this is undeniable. It depends how you read as well. I love to read in bed, and do so almost everyday. I have got these new beautiful mattresses from this site here, so snuggling onto one and reading is always tempting. However when I read at a table with a hardback, I find my concentration is that much higher, and I get alot more from the experience.

I think with mulitple tabs, and twitter, and BuzzFeed and things like this, we are so used to skim-reading, to moving on to the next article, taking just the bare bones of what we can from a text as fast as possible. I think we can get into this habit, and this can damage the experience when we read literature.

[DiapDealer]

The problem with bemoaning the "damage" that social media and "skim"-reading can have on how we perceive/approach literature is that it ignores the fact that most Readers (capital R) have always had several different reading "modes" at their disposal. Even before the internet we were capable of switching between news/article-, study-, entertainment-, and "deeply refective-" modes of reading. I don't think putting the text on a screen and giving The Reader the ability access it just about anywhere they go has much bearing on their ability to "switch gears," myself. And of the readers who never develop anything other than Tweet-mode, article-browsing reading skills ... well, lets just say I don't believe they'd have been likely to develop "deeper" reading skills even if Facebook, Twitter, BuzzFeed and the like (or the internet in general) had never come to be. After all ... we had people whose only experiences with reading came from skimming short newspaper/magazine-sized snippets long before the internet was invented.

I was asked how I could stand "just sitting there reading books" long before I had my first email account. The skim-reading, what's-the-gist-ma'am, article-browser wasn't born with the internet and social media.

Readers read--in a multitude of gears. Those who ONLY read in tweet-sized chunks, were probably never going to become Readers to begin with.

Social Media isn't killing the Literature Star.

[latepaul]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Social Media isn't killing the Literature Star.

This.

Also there are Readers and Readers. People look for different things in their reading. I recall discussing reading with an adult when I was a teenager (so very pre-internet) and being shocked that this person, who read a lot of novels, admitted that their usual approach to fiction was "scan the descriptive passages until [he] came to the next section of dialogue". This, he said, came from being forced to read Dickens as a child. He just didn't get much from long flowery descriptions*.

Neither for that matter do I. My horror came more from my neurotic gut feeling that if you don't read every word then you haven't really read it!

(*his words not mine. I've never really read Dickens. He's on my TBR but it's long)

[B-ratz]

I take all your points, but still hold firm on mine.

I am not saying social media has killed the Literature Star (at least, I don't think I am, I am not actually completely sure what that is). And although I agree that people have always read at different gears, and that people have always skim read, I still think the shear amount of text that is available on the internet makes the whole thing an utterly different ball game. When you read a newspaper in the old days, sure, there were other articles that would grab away your attention, but there weren't million of these articles, popping up all over the page, from different sources, different writers, different topics. Any topic. There were only a certain amount of adverts in the pages, and only a certain amount of articles in a paper. This is very different.

Also, I don't think we should necessarily deride this new form of reading. For myself, when wanting to read about a heated topic such as Gaza or Ukraine, I like to jump between US news sites, to Russian ones, to European, (or Arabic / Israeli as the case may be ...). I don't read every article completely, but I like to get the tone from each so i feel I have as rounded and well informed position as possible. When I wrote about this new kind of reading, I wasn't deriding people who only read tweets.

I'm not saying people can't still read literature well, I am just saying that it is a different exercise for our minds, and it takes more and more time to adjust, the more we partake in the skim reading.

Originally Posted by latepaul

This.

This.

Social media has changed how we write. It would be ridiculous to suggest it hasn't changed how we read.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by B-ratz

Social media has changed how we write. It would be ridiculous to suggest it hasn't changed how we read.

All I can say is; it hasn't changed how I read. Internet/Periodicals for browsing. Armchair/bed for Reading.
(I don't write, I consider my social media activities talking.)

[gwhite]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

The problem with bemoaning the "damage" that social media and "skim"-reading can have on how we perceive/approach literature is that it ignores the fact that most Readers (capital R) have always had several different reading "modes" at their disposal. Even before the internet we were capable of switching between news/article-, study-, entertainment-, and "deeply refective-" modes of reading.

I think this is absolutely true and being able to do so is the mark of a skilled reader.


With the advent of social media and the Education system giving less emphasis upon being able to memorise, what I do think has changed is the concentration span of younger readers which has to have an effect upon reading habits.

[Quexos]

I am beyond caring about my reading speed. I just know it's not as fast as I would like it to be but it's fine cause I don't wanna skim through a book, I enjoy understanding all its words and lines.
I read books to enjoy them, not to be the first to finish reading them.

[Luffy]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

All I can say is; it hasn't changed how I read. Internet/Periodicals for browsing. Armchair/bed for Reading.
(I don't write, I consider my social media activities talking.)

That is a good point. I too don't consider posting really as writing. I never saw it in that light consciously.

[Luffy]

Originally Posted by Quexos

I am beyond caring about my reading speed. I just know it's not as fast as I would like it to be but it's fine cause I don't wanna skim through a book, I enjoy understanding all its words and lines.
I read books to enjoy them, not to be the first to finish reading them.

I don't know fellow readers in real life, so I must appeal to you guys...do you know of people who skim or skip the boring parts to be able to read at a blitzing speed?

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Luffy

I don't know fellow readers in real life, so I must appeal to you guys...do you know of people who skim or skip the boring parts to be able to read at a blitzing speed?

There are people here at MR who have said that they do exactly that. There are also people who do the opposite and say that if you read at a speed that's faster than you could read the book aloud, you can't be fully appreciating it. I don't agree with either of these extremes, but each to their own.

[Quexos]

Originally Posted by HarryT

There are people here at MR who have said that they do exactly that. There are also people who do the opposite and say that if you read at a speed that's faster than you could read the book aloud, you can't be fully appreciating it. I don't agree with either of these extremes, but each to their own.

Ok you don't agree with either schools of thought, so what is your opinion on the matter

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Quexos

Ok you don't agree with either schools of thought, so what is your opinion on the matter

My opinion on the matter is simple: do whatever works for you - there are no "right" or "wrong" ways to read, as long as you're enjoying it

[Luffy]

Originally Posted by HarryT

My opinion on the matter is simple: do whatever works for you - there are no "right" or "wrong" ways to read, as long as you're enjoying it

Agreed! Gentlemen, to books, the cause of many, and solution to many, of life's problems.