# How Do You Define having Read a Book? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [April 29, 2022, 2:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-define-having-read-a-book/963675 "2022-04-29T14:05:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2022, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-define-having-read-a-book/963675/41 "2022-04-29T20:33:08Z")
> [@Richard\_Pearse](#): > > I hear the words in my head as well, but I can glance at a group of words and know what they are. When I really get into a book, I stop seeing words at all, and it all just starts playing like a movie in my head. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Pearse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/richard_pearse/32/13144_2.png) [@Richard\_Pearse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Pearse)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2022, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-define-having-read-a-book/963675/42 "2022-04-29T20:39:09Z")
Yeah, I don’t guess any words, but my brain can pick them all up a whole lot faster than I can read them aloud. In your post I look at “miss a lot of nuance” and see it almost as a word in itself. My inner voice races along trying to keep up. If you read something out loud that you’ve never read before, can you read it with the appropriate tone and inflection even though the tone instructions may appear later in the sentence? > [@Two\_Many\_Cats2](#): > > Fluent? I dunno. I have written four fanfiction novels though. Word by word. I can write musical scores, but I’m not fluent at reading music, even though I know what each symbol means. The way you describe reading it seems stilted, maybe it is or maybe you’re underselling yourself, I don’t know, but it sounds like it would be stilted and therefore not fluent. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2022, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-define-having-read-a-book/963675/43 "2022-04-29T20:46:44Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > The Dawn of Everything, for instance, is going to take me several weeks, during which I’m also doing a whole lot of other things – but a miscellaneous mystery story may be one long evening spent in front of the wood stove in winter. I’ve been reading _the Dawn of Everything_ for months. And enjoying it! But it is slower going than a light novel. I just reread “the Voyage of the Dawntreader” in a couple of hours. I read faster when i was younger. I think i read about 150 books the year i was in eleventh grade, including a lot of heavy classics. (And a lot of light murder mysteries.) I see nothing surprising about the claims in the OP. (And yes, like others, if i just skim a book, or quit before the end, i don’t think I’ve read it.) ---
**Author:** ![Two\_Many\_Cats2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/779978/32.png) [@Two\_Many\_Cats2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Two_Many_Cats2)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2022, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-define-having-read-a-book/963675/44 "2022-04-29T20:51:33Z")
> [@Richard\_Pearse](#): > > If you read something out loud that you’ve never read before, can you read it with the appropriate tone and inflection even though the tone instructions may appear later in the sentence? I read it with the tone and inflections that sound natural to me. “You can’t do that,” he cried vs “You can’t do that,” he muttered. I will usually let the context of the prior dialogue or situation determine how it sounds to my inward ear. If I read it as ‘he cried’, and it turns out ‘he muttered’, it can be a bit jarring, but not by much. And usually ‘he cried’ will use an exclamation point whereas a comma will suffice for ‘he muttered’. There’s ways to tell. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2022, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-define-having-read-a-book/963675/45 "2022-04-29T23:49:48Z")
> [@Two\_Many\_Cats2](#): > > I read word by word. Always have. I hear the text in my head as I read it. So did Abraham Lincoln. Me too. So you two are in good company. ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2022, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-define-having-read-a-book/963675/46 "2022-04-30T00:14:03Z")
> [@Two\_Many\_Cats2](#): > > How do you define having read a book? Do you count stuff you didn’t complete? I don’t. If I say I read it, I read it, Forward, Introduction, and all. While I count audiobooks, I don’t count books I didn’t finish. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2022, 8:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-define-having-read-a-book/963675/47 "2022-04-30T08:33:08Z")
> [@epbrown](#): > > Being a nerd, I clocked it, and throughout school I read at about 100 pages an hour, and since books were shorter back then, that meant I could knock out Zelazny’s _Nine Princes in Amber_ in a couple of hours, or Asimov’s _Foundation_ in under three. ^ This. 30 or 40 years ago the typical novel was shorter which made it easier to read a book (or even two!) a day. I was one of those book-a-day readers, and _yes_, I read cover-to-cover. Some “chewier” books took a bit longer, 2-3 days. I don’t read as many books as I used to. I blame the internet, having an adult job, and watching more videos. ---
**Author:** ![naita](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/naita/32/5862_2.png) [@naita](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/naita)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2022, 12:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-define-having-read-a-book/963675/48 "2022-04-30T12:49:03Z")
> [@Two\_Many\_Cats2](#): > > And usually ‘he cried’ will use an exclamation point whereas a comma will suffice for ‘he muttered’. There’s ways to tell. Yes, but the exclamation point comes after the words, after the sentence. So if you can use those hints while reading a text you haven’t encountered before, you are doing what people are describing, registering more than just “word for word”. ---
**Author:** ![epbrown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e47774/32.png) [@epbrown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/epbrown)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2022, 1:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-define-having-read-a-book/963675/49 "2022-04-30T13:23:02Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > I don’t read as many books as I used to. I blame the internet, having an adult job, and watching more videos. I came full circle. When I first got the internet back in the 90s, I was on it for hours, and I read less. In a few years, I found myself washed up on the library steps again, starved for coherent sentences, correct spelling and punctuation. It’s an ocean with words, words, everywhere, and not a thought to think. ---
**Author:** ![Two\_Many\_Cats2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/779978/32.png) [@Two\_Many\_Cats2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Two_Many_Cats2)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2022, 1:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-define-having-read-a-book/963675/50 "2022-04-30T13:25:27Z")
OMG!!! I am soooo stealing that last line!!! ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2022, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-define-having-read-a-book/963675/51 "2022-04-30T19:11:12Z")
To me if you say you’ve read a book, without qualification, then you’re claiming to have read it from cover to cover. (If you qualify it, of course, you could mean any number of things.) Myself I don’t speedread; I read for entertainment so I read every word, give or take. I exclusively read fiction, generally of the trade paperbook style, and as a kid I used to read voraciously. Probably my record was reading both Ender’s Game and Speaker For the Dead in one schoolday (~750 pages together; it was all study periods for the upcoming finals so I could read basically undisturbed). Usually I didn’t get as much reading time as that, but I always carried two books so that I’d have another to read once I finished the first. Nowadays I don’t read _nearly_ as much, and I clock about a page a minute. This is pretty easy to tell since I read over my lunch hour, which is of course timed. However there is one big recent exception: my own book. Recently I started re-reading my own book, with the notion that I would resume working on book 3 once I’d reacquainted myself, and it’s going far slower than normal. This can partly be accounted for because the pages are larger than the average trade paperback in an attempt to get the page count down, but I think I’m also reading slower than usual just to absorb it better. (And to find typos. The damned things are like bugs - you can stomp them all out, then come back and there are more. Repeatedly.) ---
**Author:** ![carrps](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carrps/32/2957_2.png) [@carrps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carrps)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2022, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-define-having-read-a-book/963675/52 "2022-04-30T22:28:13Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > I’ve been reading _the Dawn of Everything_ for months. And enjoying it! But it is slower going than a light novel. It’s still in my to-be-read pile, so, good to know. A book only counts as read if the whole book is read (minus what was mentioned already). I’ve never calculated my speed, but as other people have said my speed varies considerable depending on what I’m reading. Sometimes English writers slow me down. It’s weird – I’ll read a sentence with words that I understand, but the gist of the sentence escapes me. Then, I’ll “read” the sentence but hear it in my head in an English accent (I like to use Emma Thompson), and it will become comprehensible. Very weird, as I said. I first noticed ages ago when I was first reading Dorothy L. Sayers. I started _The Cairo Trilogy_ last week which is set in 1920s Egypt (duh), but I got nearly 200 pages in (mostly through the first book in the trilogy), and I had to put it down. It was really depressing me. The view into life in a middle class family in Cairo during that time period is fascinating, but the attitude of the family patriarch is _so_ off-putting. I don’t know if I’ll pick it up again. So, I spent all of last week getting mostly through one book, but I’ve since completed 2 3/4 books this week. And books don’t have to be boring to slow me down. I read _Islandia_ last year, and it was such a rich detailed world, I deliberately slowed my reading and savored it. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2022, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-define-having-read-a-book/963675/53 "2022-04-30T23:19:40Z")
I find it difficult to only read part of a work of fiction, so I had to learn to read fast to get it all done. And, yes, that does involve reading more than a word at a time, allowing me to not dwell on all the filler words. I actually noticed myself switching into book reading mode here so I could read the entire thread in a short enough time. It’s not quite skimming, as that would involve intentionally skipping things. I also find that this restriction is why I don’t read all that often. I don’t like getting engrossed in fictional worlds for as long as it takes to read a book, even with my method. The world around me feels unreal. It’s also why I don’t binge watch TV shows. ---
**Author:** ![Ann\_Hedonia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ann_hedonia/32/319_2.png) [@Ann\_Hedonia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ann_Hedonia)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2022, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-define-having-read-a-book/963675/54 "2022-04-30T23:54:44Z")
> [@engineer\_comp\_geek](#): > > I don’t read word by word, I read groups of words, if that makes any sense. Totally. I was trying to explain that to someone today, in the context of being horrible at proofreading. I can read something a dozen times and miss things like “they” instead of “the”, “an instead of “and” . My brain just doesn’t see them and trying to read a word at a time is excruciating. I probably go through about 3 books a week, on average but that varies greatly book by book depending on multiple factors. If I’ve got a good book going, I may spend more time each day reading but I might also slow down and savor it. There are lot of books I can get through in a sitting or two, but I also have a thing for long epic novels, the 1000 pagers……those can take a week or so. I will give up on a book if it’s really bad, like _Kindle Unlimited_ bad, but if it has some redeeming value (like a historical novel with a mediocre plot but lots of interesting factual details) I may just skim it once I lose interest. I also read more in the summer, because I tend to spend a couple of hours each afternoon reading outdoors, in my backyard or at the nearby pool. ---
**Author:** ![Dung\_Beetle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dung_beetle/32/7945_2.png) [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2022, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-define-having-read-a-book/963675/55 "2022-05-01T00:04:23Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > The world around me feels unreal. That’s the reason I like it. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2022, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-define-having-read-a-book/963675/56 "2022-05-01T00:10:46Z")
I don’t count forewords, introductions, and the like. Just the meat. If I really liked the book, I may read the supplemental stuff to help me fill it in. If I gave up on a book most of the way, I say that I read part of that book, or most of that book, or that I couldn’t finish it. _Hundred Years of Solitude_ is mostly what I’m thinking of in this regard. I’ve tried several times to read it; life got in the way; I tried to return and got completely lost with the characters and family trees and everything. I couldn’t got on and maintain a coherent narrative. So I say “I’ve read bits and pieces” of that book. Despite being a English major, I am not a voracious reader. The last novels I read (last year) were Pnin (short and simple) and Pale Fire (trying in places, but worth it, if not the ecstatic joy Lolita was), and the first 10% of Infinite Jest before my library loan got recalled. I’ve always been more of a short story and poem sort of person. ---
**Author:** ![engineer\_comp\_geek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/engineer_comp_geek/32/504_2.png) [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2022, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-define-having-read-a-book/963675/57 "2022-05-01T04:13:52Z")
> [@Ann\_Hedonia](#): > > in the context of being horrible at proofreading Yep. I am horrible at proofreading too, for the same reason. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2022, 5:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-define-having-read-a-book/963675/58 "2022-05-01T05:06:20Z")
It kind of depends. Sometimes if I’m reading as a primary activity, I might read for a couple of hours straight, and mow through a lot of a normal sized novel. I can get through books pretty quickly at that pace. If they’re really engaging, then I might start reading a bit faster than is probably ideal. I’m a pretty fast reader even if I’m not into it and reading fast. Most of the time though, I’m reading for 30 minutes or so every night, and chipping away at a book. It might take me a week to go through one at that pace, assuming I stick to one book. Not because I’m a slow reader, but because I’m not reading much at a sitting. Generally speaking I have a couple of novels and a reference book going at once though, so it may take me longer to go through one book than if I read one straight through. As far as whether I “read” a book, I count it if I started and completed it. Reading half is usually described by me as “I read some” or “I read the first half” of the book. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2022, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-define-having-read-a-book/963675/59 "2022-05-01T19:27:21Z")
> [@Ann\_Hedonia](#): > > Totally. I was trying to explain that to someone today, in the context of being horrible at proofreading. I can read something a dozen times and miss things like “they” instead of “the”, “an instead of “and” . My brain just doesn’t see them and trying to read a word at a time is excruciating. When I proofread I have to include a pass of reading the piece aloud to myself, which makes it harder for me to skip over missing words and things. Isn’t 100% perfect, but it helps. It helps in other ways also. ---
**Author:** ![N9IWP](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/n9iwp/32/3154_2.png) [@N9IWP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/N9IWP)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2022, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-define-having-read-a-book/963675/60 "2022-05-01T20:36:34Z")
I read LOTR evert 10 years, but I have to admit I don’t read all the appendices every time. I have probably read them all but will not swear to it. I hope I don’t have to turn in my fan card 😉 Brian [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-define-having-read-a-book/963675.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-define-having-read-a-book/963675.md?page=4)