Books you read this year

[Qrazy]

I used to find it both embarassing and frustrating that it took me so long to read.

For some reason I've sped up in the last couple of years, though.

I just remember sitting in class in high school and watching people flip several pages during the time it took me to read one, and feeling really stupid.

It's a dumb thing to feel embarassed about, though. I'd give up my speed in an instant if it meant I could retain and more deeply understand what I read.

Yeah, that's why I hesitate to embrace or work on my speed reading. I can assume it's the case that it's true people who speed read retain more... but I don't see how they could possibly have a deeper understanding. I find it's incredibly beneficial to allow your mind to wander and reflect upon the meaning of the ideas, symbols, character psychology, etc while you're reading... to pursue a thought a passage inspires in you, even write it down and begin to extrapolate versus pushing it out of your head to return to the text and the author's thoughts. The most important element of reading for me is the given and take between the author's thoughts and my thoughts. I will certainly have thoughts on what I've read after I've read it as well, but to shut down the thoughts I have during the reading in favor of direct textual cognition... seems too limiting to me.

[megladon8]

Well the thing with me is that I am not purposely trying to read quickly - it's just the natural speed I read at.

I actually find it quite distracting to consciously try to slow myself down.

It's kind of a catch-22 situation. If I keep reading quickly the way I do, I don't retain as much, and I don't have an understanding of what I'm reading much past the surface, or more obvious analogies.

But if I consciously slow myself down, I get frustrated and put the book down.

This is why I have a ridiculously hard time trying to read Shakespeare. I honestly, for the life of me, cannot understand that language at all.

I read "Hamlet" three or four times in high school, and "Romeo & Juliet" twice, and even after all those re-reads, I still had no idea what the hell was going on unless someone explained it to me.