I’m a slow reader. I mean, I consider myself to be smart and, ya know, fluent in this here English language. But my reading clocks in at around a page every 2-3 minutes. I could read a bit faster than that, but I start losing all comprehension of what I’m reading.
I’m reading a 1000 page book right now (Gai-Jin) and I’ve got at most the bus ride to and from work to read during the day. It’s taken me, like, two months to kill that sucker.
My wife, at a conservative estimate, reads at around 4x the speed I do. I have no clue how she does it. And it drives me absolutely bonkers when she decides to read the same book I’m reading during the same time period I am.
I also estimate my time at a page a minute for leisure reading. I can read faster or slower depending on my goals and reasons for reading the materiel.
I’ve never actually timed myself, but I know that I read the first 5 Harry Potter books in about 6 days of 9-5ish reading (I was unemployed and I’d stop reading when my husband came home from work). I read Christopher Moore’s Fool in less than 4 hours on a plane, with breaks for meals.
I used Under The Dome to estimate my speed just recently, so I could figure out how many days to take off from work (a new SK book is a holiday as far as I’m concerned). It was approximately 100 pages per hour.
I did take a day off and burned through most of it in one sitting. However, my usual time allotment for reading is about half an hour per day, and on some sad days, I don’t get to read at all. So it takes me around a week to get through the average book.
It varies, I read novels very quickly, and if I’m rereading something it’s even faster. Last time I was ill, I reread all of Prachett’s Guard novels, and a pile of Tamora Pierce that my wife had lying around, in a single day. Non-fiction depends a great deal on subject matter and era it was written in, but is always vastly slower than fiction.
I’m wierd though; I learned to read much later than most people (between second and thrid grade) due to an ugly combo of dyslexia and adhd. Part of that process was being taught how to visualize a story as I’m reading it, so I experince many books almost as movies.
Hey, don’t worry about how fast. Slow down enough to enjoy it.
I remember I read a Stephen King book (might have been The Stand) and was so into it that I spent the ENTIRE weekend reading it. And I mean entire. I sat down after work on Friday night and except for eating, bathroom and sleeping, I never put the book down until I went to sleep on Sunday night and got up Monday a.m. for work. And I still wasn’t finished…
Like is a little more complicated now and I just couldn’t find a block of time like that again. Too bad.
Heh. Fortunately I keep my daily schedule pretty open. I don’t make much money, but I spend a lot of time reading/playing guitar/playing video games/hiking/kayaking/etc.
It takes me about 2-3 minutes to read a page. The most I ever read in one sitting is probably 100-150 pages, so if I were really ambitious, I might be able to read it in a week. In real life, it takes me about a month to read a book that size.
I read such books quite fast - 150+ pages an hour, faster if it’s a larger print - but works like the Mitrokhin Archive rather more slowly. But I’m well aware that I do miss subtleties. So, if I’ve enjoyed the book, I’ll re-read it.
I have never timed myself, but it looks like I’m in good company here as a faster-than-average reader. I like my books good and thick - those thin little books are just a snack now.
If it sucks me in, really fast. I just did Under the Dome last weekend, and I started it on Friday night, and finished on Saturday in the late afternoon.
It’s one of those things - when I would take a break, and the house was quiet, I had to remind myself that I was not stuck under a dome in Maine. Am I the only one that happens to?
Back during summer vacation when I was 13 years old, I read The Hobbit in a single sitting one day.
That same summer, I also read James Michener’s The Source in a single sitting one day. IIRC, the paperback edition that I read was 1,088 pages long. That’s likely a record for me.
When I was 10 years old, my 5th grade teacher spent weeks reading Where the Red Fern Grows to the class. When he stopped the day’s reading one Friday near the climax, I begged to borrow the book for the weekend because I couldn’t wait to see what happened next. I ended up reading the whole book from the beginning that night by flashlight in my room, under the covers. Even at that age, it only took me a few hours.
Nowadays, it takes me so long to finish a book, I usually lose interest before I finish it. That’s mainly because I have a lot more distractions in my life now. Plus, I read a lot more non-fiction now, so it’s not like I’m actually following a story.
