This is in response to how many books some of you move through. I am probably in the lowest category most of the time, in part because I am a slow reader, and in part because I like to take notes and think through things.

Magazines are usually only 100 pages... easily under an hour... unless it's Adbusters... that one's so good, I read it slow.

Yeah, I rarely read books. I'm ig'nant. Either that or I prefer other forms of entertainment.

~fff


The last book I read (the updated version of the blue one):

Is there any way to test this? I honestly have no idea how fast I read. I thought I was a fast reader, but recently, I have begun to question this belief.

I'm with you posty -- big fan o' magazines. But smart ones...yeah, smart ones. Like Psychology Today and Time....and er, Blender and Jane.

Ok, I'm ig'nant too.

you can't really do an accurate rate by pages-per-hour. I think words-per-minute is the standard measure. some books have 500 words on a page, some have 5.

on average, I read about 20-24 books a year, so roughly 2-per-month. I might have 2 heavy-hitters in there if I'm lucky (like a Brothers Karamazov type book). most are your basic 200ish page books.

this is an unfair quesiton.... read what?

standard book, i'm usually a page a minute guy.

give me a theology book, or something with significant "weight" to it, and well, i'm lucky if i can get through 5 pages/hr.

When I was an undergrad, I would usually take about three hours to complete 100 pages - with reading, re-reading, and ecetera.

Depends on whether or not I'm reading with the sound muted or not. If it's not muted, and I'm reading during the commercials (muted, of course) then not too many.

Cher

Interesting replies. I did not consider all the variation in things we read, which make this a difficult question to answer. I responded in the 10-20 pages per hour range, though, because if I am not taking notes, I can move through that much of the average book I read (something nonfiction or theological) in an hour. If I am reading a cycling magazine, though, it is probably more like 30-40. A good novel is probably closer to that for me, too, but I do not read too many novels.

Well, I did a fast-read course at high school and I used to read very fast (aahhhhh, the things you do to study!!!).

back in high school i used to read a 300 page sci-fi novel every day or two. i think that works out to about 40 pages an hour... roughly. i know i've read a 400+ book in less than 5 hours, but it was a dark and stormy night, i was alone, and the material was terrifying... back then. i won't tell the title or author because i would look STUPID now.

i read all of harry potter 3 in one night, and book 4 the next night.

the material i've been reading has slowed me down significantly though. popular sci-fi is easy stuff. socio/political commentary, epic poetry, and philosophy is hard.

I've no idea how to gauge this. When I had to read Hume or Kant for my Phil. courses...I would read like 3 pages before my head was spinning...especially Kant. Francis Schaeffer too, I had to read and re-read a lot of his stuff before it started clicking.

I used to be able to sit down and read for hours, but I think I've become more ADD or something, and I work chapter by chapter now. I find it works well enough. Doesn't overload my brain and I can make significant progress in one day.

If I'm reading children's books, then the answer is well in excess of a hundred.
If I'm readding fluffy fluff books, then we're in the 80-100 category.
For the average novel, I read between sixty and seventy-five pages per hour.
For more difficult material which I don't feel compelled to read thoroughly (or which I'm skimming in ten minutes in desperate preparation for an exam), I read between forty-five and sixty pages per hour, erring towards the high end (much panic).
For something challenging which I want to really truly READ, I read something between a page or two per hour to twenty pages per hour, depending on the material, how many times I need to reread it in order to process it to my satisfaction, whether or not I'm underlining, whether or not I'm taking notes, and whether or not I'm writing simultaneous train-of-thought commentary on a sidelying sheet of looseleaf.

I'm either 75-100 or 100+ .... for a novel of somesort (I went with a typical Lord of the Rings chapter)

Text books are a different story because they have no flow...nor rhyme or reason (to me, anyway).

Granted, I read VERY fast and test to skip insignificant words, lines or paragraphs....which is sad, I know...but this is how it's always been done...ever since my mom made me read the Little House on the Prarie books on a road trip and said that only after I read one (my first actual big-girl book) could I play my little he-man handheld electronic game...or whatever. Meanie....so I did (and I ended up LIKING it)...and I'm a speed-reader ever since!

The good thing about skipping so much is that the NEXT time I read it....different parts of the plot and such are revealed and I'm like.. ::sigh of understanding::

Since I started pleasure-reading late (not really until college) I've been able to keep track of every book I've ever read. Looking back I average about 12 books a year - 1 a month. These books are all over the place - from 150 page fiction to 900-page biographies, but I figure it all evens out to your average 350-page paperback - so 1 of those a month.

OMG, i thought i was strange, but you just summed up my situation exactly! i do that with books, and i can read them over again, and i'm actually surprised by the surprise endings AGAIN! my husband reads slowly but really RETAINS... he's jealous cuz he only gets the thrill the first time around... and he rarely finds time to read anymore, either.

of course, i devour only novels that voraciously. if it's heavy reading (a chewy C.S. Lewis type sci-fi, or Thomas Watson, or philosophy, or some such) i will intersperse it with several lighter pieces which i'll read simultaneously (for instance, i'll save the heavy one for right before bed when my mind is really obsessive-focused, and sprinkle a magazine or a few novels or a self-help fluff book in the other rooms) for, well, i guess you could say "a breather." or comic relief. (i dunno, geez.)

i guess i don't know how long it takes me to read those, because i don't sit still and read them straight through as i would a mystery etc. i've worked on some books like that for months, lost interest for a while, and come back to them and finished them inside of a week.

if you're talking about reading the words, i can *read* and comprehend el speedy gonzales. i don't have to actually *read* the words, i kind of just *see* them, and extract interpreted meaning from them, which i ride like a wave of implications and shifty perceptions. i don't retain much mundane detail, though, and after only a few days, i am left with this hazy dreamlike memory full of color, textures, sounds, impressions, and mood-- but i can't even remember the names of the main characters most of the time. books are like movies for me; i *experience* them.

my friends and family find the speediness endearing because they love how it affects my ability to read out loud. by the time i have said the first word in the sentence, i've read the whole thing and am starting on the next, so my expression and animation is usually right on the money. even my grade school teachers always made me read out loud to the class because of this.

but as cool as that might sound, i hate it, because i am starving to move on and get to the next bit, and i become extremely impatient and bored when begged to read a whole novel aloud. i've been known to lull victims to sleep with an especially monotone voice just so i could skip ahead a few chapters before they startled awake. but i'm always found out because i can hardly remember where i left them behind and i have to flip around for it... duh!

sometimes i will buckle down and actually READ a book. but usually only after i have breezed through it hungrily like that. then i can decide if a book is worth my undivided attention, and i'll begin to actually take the time to digest it. after all, if i only ever binged and purged, my mind would starve.

and that would suck.

debro,

I'm in the 10 - 20 page catagory, if I push it! But I can't remember the last time I read any fiction, so one reason I read more slowly is because of the nonfiction topics. I just like learning new things, learning more about things I already know. Even so, I wouldn't mind reading faster. Took one of those speed reading courses this past summer - went to about l/3 of the classes. They say to skip words and to talk about what you're reading to someone else to enhance recollection.

i read at the same speed in which i talk. i can't just skim over words. i figure that if the author took the time to put them in there, then i should take the time to read them. so yeah, it can take me a while to finish a book.

my friend, mary, on the other hand is a very fast reader. she bought the last harry potter at midnight and had it read by 1pm the next day. this also included time for sleep, packing and driving to the airport. so then i had to sit on the plane with her for the entire flight while she was just bursting to talk to somebody about the ending. of course, nobody else had finished it by then.

that would be me. I'd be exceptionally happy that I'd made it to Page 22 by that point..

Too fast, usually. Ever since I was a little kid. Always battled comprehension problems. I can usually go back and find something I'm looking for though after reading through it once. Part of it has to do with the content though. I tend to have to read fiction much slower. Can't move on unless I completely understand what's already happened...

I have no idea how many pages per min. I can do. I've always thought that I was a very slow reader.

(now, no laughter or giggles here on this next part)

When I read silently to myself, I read exactly like you would if you were to read out loud to an audience or something. I do that in my head I guess. Silly? Maybe. Slow? you bet. But that's how I do it. I've tried to speed things up and 1.) I don't enjoy it. and 2.) I find myself skipping over things and I worry that I might miss a point or something. I did well in school and enjoyed it, but it always took me longer to do the reading parts. Oh well.

Does anyone else do this or am I just "ig'nant"

I read a little bit faster than I could talk.

they say reading is a visual thing (obviously), and if you're reading at the speed of speech, you're not trusting your eyes and you're making it an auditory thing (i.e. "hearing" the word in your head while reading it). I think I read that that is bad for comprehension too (or perhaps it was that true reading has better comprehension than "speech reading"). the trick is to get the words / phrases to represent something in your head (an idea, a picture, etc - it's meaning) without getting bogged down with that extra step of needing to hear how that word sounds, which only then in turn represents what it's supposed to (it's meaning). when reading, we should be able to see phrases at once and understand their meaning. with speech, we have to wait until the entire phrase is spoken and heard before it's entire meaning is understood. speed readers are able to trust their eyes so completely that they can see entire paragraphs at once (which we too are doing, but we just can't get past the filter of speech, nor have we learned to trust what our eyes see, and so most of us read one word or phrase at a time). comparatively, reading one word at a time is analagous to someone reading words one letter at a time. most of us (who can read) don't have to work our way through the sound of each letter in a word before we know what the word is. we just see the word, in it's entirety. the next step (which most of us don't take) is to learn to see sentences or phrases together at once the same way we see all those letters together at once.


I'm getting all of this, not from my ass, but rather the memory of a home speed-reading course I checked out of the library once a long time ago. I didn't learn to speed read, but I think it did improve how I read, and it was utterly fascinating with the video. it was amazing how much we really can grab in a split-second visual.

Wow! Which one of us is the reading development specialist?? I'm amazed. Truly.

Here is what my job is...fascinating work for me. I can think of no better way to spend my time than to help six year olds decipher this amazing code. Before you become a fluent reader though, you comprehend better with a story being read outloud to you. If your brain is working too hard figuring out the words, the comprehension goes down considerably. So as an adult if you are reading a difficult text, reading outloud and then rereading certain passages can help a great deal. I still love to read poetry and Shakespeare outloud when I am by myself.

Mbyae one of you can eixplan how tihs can hpapen tehn. I was bolwn away by tihs wehn I saw it. How is it pssobleie to cehpmneord waht is bneig wtiertn wehn olny two of the ltretes are peacld in the crcoet odrer?

God gave us that ability so we could read James Joyce.
no, actually I think it's because we've already learned those words, and so we "know what you mean", so to speak. if we couldn't do that, then proofreading and spell checking wouldnt' be possible. words are symbols for us, and if the symbol looks close enough to what it's supposed to be, and doesn't look too similar to other symbols, then it still retains it's symbolic meaning in our minds. if we were reading words one letter at a time, then I'm guessing we wouldn't understand what you were saying. I'm betting Carrie's students wouldn't "know" what those words were, because they aren't yet at the level of recognizing words at once, they're still at the letter by letter level. and your example would f*ck them up for life! but it might be a fascinating experiment to try on some expendable six-year-olds. got any extras lying around that we can mess with? (actually, I'm betting this experiment has already been done on readers at that level)

What's fascinating about what Carrie says (regarding reading out loud for better comprehension), is that it is that very thing that needs to be overcome if one is to become a speed reader. The reason what she says is true, I'm guessing, is that, when we were learning our language skills, the "sound" of a word (speech) attained a symbolic meaning in our minds before the written word, and so it is a more primary way to understand these symbols we call words. hearing is not only how we learned words first, it is by far what we use the most, and so our brains are obviously more comfortable with that form of understanding. hence reading aloud would put your mind in a more comfortable (and more frequently used) state for understanding what is written (or "being said" in writing). When we learn to read, we are learning to associate what is written to the auditory symbols we already know - the "sounds" of letters and words. We heard the word "NO" probably hundreds of times before we saw what it looked like in writing. the sound already had a symbolic meaning in our minds, and in learning to read the word, we were taught to associate those written symbols with the sound we were well familiar with. Speed reading (or at least reading beyond the speed of speech) requires that we understand the symbolic association of the written word directly to it's meaning and not to how it sounds out loud. but because the "how it sounds" method is how we learned to read in the first place, this can be an extremely difficult thing to do (or undo, as the case may be). Associating the written word to how it sounds should be considered a means to an end, one that will have to be undone to a certain degree if one wants to read much faster.

one great way we are taught to read is with picture cards, where, say, a picture of a cat is above the word "CAT". It seems to me that this method of learning gives us direct association from written word to meaning, and it is probably those words that we can read extremely fast now, not needing to "hear" the word in our head first before comprehension kicks in.

most of this I'm pulling out of my ass. smells pretty good though...

..

I'm still trying to figure out why "speed" is even an issue...

I read about 2 books a month, maybe 3 if I'm really cruising.
I buy about 10 books a month.
I own around 1,000 books right now.
I have read, in my life, just under 400.
I am 35.
I am not immortal.
TOO MANY F*CKING BOOKS, TOO LITTLE LIFETIME!!!
If I don't get around to reading most of the books that are on my shelf right now, not to mention all the books I will yet buy in my life with eager anticipation, I will be so depressed that I will kill myself.
and then I'll have even less time to read.

I think it's good to be able to read faster (especially with improved comprehension), not for every book one reads, but for those books that don't need to be savoured (like, say, Stephen King, or perhaps a good deal of non-fiction - certain history, theology, that sort of thing, where the art of the matter isn't necessarily the point).
Being able to run a 5-minute mile doesn't mean you can never enjoy a leisurely walk when you want. but it's nice to have the ability when you want it. because sometimes you don't want to walk, sometimes you want to win a race. or just get to where you're going when your car breaks down and you're a mile away and going to be late in another 10 minutes.
and I think you would agree that if someone is reading at the rate of a page an hour, then they should probably learn to read faster.

p.s. - I certainly would never advocate speed-reading for poetry (in fact, I think poetry usually ought to be read out loud).

Sounds like you have more problems than simply not reading fast enough...

I'd say it's more of an organization/discipline problem than a speed problem (then again, you may have that too)!

hmmmm, i'm estimating about 50-75, which i'd say is an average between how fast i read fiction and how slow i read non-fiction. like many who've typed before me, the heavier the material the slower i read.

i have been known to read through an entire novel in a couple of hours, but usually i'm in the middle of at least 3-5 books at once! i love to read, can ya tell?

Not sure how to quantify this, so I'll do a recipe:

Take one turtle, preferrably very old.
Dispense 2 10mg Valium to said turtle.
Place in 110 degree climate with 100% humidity.
Place pillow nearby.
Turn on CSPAN for turtle to watch.

The turtle's feet per second at this point will roughly equal my pages per minute. Give or take.

Serve chilled, great with white wine.

I read 2 or 3 books a week and listen to about that many a week while I drive around all day working.

how fast do i read???

not bloody fast enough!

so little time, so many books
d.

I've only ever met one person that reads faster than I do. I read really really fast. Too fast for comprehension, if I'm bored by the topic. I don't know how many pages per hour, though, so I just checked the highest.

can it be considered "reading" if there is no comprehension?
I can fly my eyes across a stream of words pretty fast too if I'm not worried about retaining anything it says.

If you kill yourself, can I have your music collection? I'll even listen to all those unwrapped CD's.

You'll have to get in line... many people want me dead, if only to plunder my CD and book libraries. Sick sick people, all of you... I should kill YOU and take YOUR books and music and see how YOU like it...hmph
besides, I have made arrangements to be buried with all my books and CDs. I'm taking them with me, so back off bitch...

brook, i am not beyond grave digging for the right books and cds. id probably go for it. and im not afraid of ghosts. so, dont bother.
i leave you a few things, heck i might even thrown in the sears catalogue if you have been good to me.
d

I wish I could read more. Too many things taking my attention away from it. And I don't want to bother if I can't read in peace.

It took me two months to get through "The Fountainhead." Granted, its a long book (700 pages in small print) but still. TWO MONTHS!!!

oh, that's probably about how long that one would take me, if I were reading it straight through with nothing else on my plate (which I can't imagine would ever be the case). it took me 7 months to get through The Brothers Karamazov, which is about the same size, but I was also reading other things along with it. I get restless reading the same thing for too much / too long. I need variety in my literary diet.

In that case I'm havin a barbeque in your honor. What is the temperature paper burns at? Fahrenheit 451?