The Novels of Kim Young-ha
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Stuff like this simply amazes me:
Over at the Guardian there’s a blurb about how their fastest reader, John Crace, only reads sixty pages an hour, and how he considers that to be quite fast enough. I suppose I don’t know how many pages I read an hour, because really, pages are a rather inaccurate unit of measurement considering all the different sizes of pages out there. As far as words, I read anywhere from 300 to 800 words a minute, depending on the density of the material. But that’s what I always emphasize to my students – that you don’t only want to be a speed reader, you also want to have the ability to switch between gears, to be able to ponder Heidegger at 100 words a minute and fly over Harry Potter at 800. Too many people get stuck at reading all material at a plodding rate, and can’t speed up or slow down when the need arises.
On this topic, I sympathize with John Updike, who Wyatt Mason tells us reads slower than he writes. (Although, given Updike’s prodigous output, this may not mean quite what it sounds like.)
But anyway, for me 60 pages an hour is pretty much impossible. Three hundred words per minute, maybe, but probably rarely. And it seems like the older I get the slower I read.
I’m perfectly happy with this because most books I enjoy tend to cause me to stop anywhere from one to several times per page and give some thought to a particular sentence or phrase. Every now and then I’m in a mood to just truck right through the thing, but generally I like the feeling of getting caught up in the language, even if this means that I don’t get too far too quickly.
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This reminds me of an English professor from years ago who scoffed at the idea of speed reading. He said if you could read it fast it wasn’t worth reading, unless it was the newspaper.
Along these lines, I wonder what happens as more and more reading occurs online. My very unscientific guess if that online reading lends itself to skimming rather than intensive absorption. Or, if absorption is happening its occuring through the hyperkinetic shift between multiple sites and tasks that usually characterizes reading on the net. For instance, I’ve just skimmed Scott’s very interesting excerpt, glanced at the comment, written my comment, and read email inbetween. Something I might do with a book, but rarely. People “settle in” to read a book. I have yet to settle in to read the blogs I watch.
Like most people who read a lot of books, I would guess, I kinda know exactly what my average reading speed is — and it is half your man quoted above. 30 pages an hour is pretty average for me … Guess I have to go to the back of the class. Again!
This also doesn’t take into account the many WAYS of reading (ofttimes variously combined in one session). I don’t see speed reading as any less valid (nor any more interesting) than all the other ways one might approach a text, e.g. reading for sound, for meaning, skimming, for visual pleasure of print and placement, for tactile pleasure (not just for the blind), digesting small bits, engorging vast amounts, reading parts repetitively until they dissolve and then reemerge as still the same thing and yet another… I think this is one of many things severely lacking in standard education–that is, the non-one-size-fits-all approach.