 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
 |
|
 |
|
|
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
From the Fog City Divas Blog Archives "Candice on How We Read"
|
I've been a voracious reader ever since I was a kid, but I am also a very slooooooooow reader. I took a speed-reading course when I was in college, and it didn't help me at all. I can't skim. I can't run a finger down a page and let my eye capture the important bits and toss out all the insignificant words. I just can't do it. Instead, I read every word as if I were reading aloud, and every word is important to me.
|
|
|
 |
There are lots of disadvantages to being a slow reader, of course. Books that some of you can read in a night will take me a week. That means I have so many books in my to-be-read pile that it's sometimes too overwhelming to contemplate, and instead I'll pick up an old favorite to re-read. When I was in college, the number of books I had to read each quarter was more than daunting, it was frightening. It meant I got a lot less sleep than my roommates. Another disadvantage is that I am often intimidated by a really long book and will put off reading it because I know what an investment of time it will require. For example, I've had a copy of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell on my TBR pile for a couple of years, but every time I think I will finally read it, those 782 pages of tiny print discourage me. But there are advantages, too, in reading slowly and it is these that make reading a joy for me. Being a slow reader means that I savor every word. I'm a lover of language, and nothing gives me more pleasure than beautifully written prose. In fact, maybe that's why I'm so slow ... I just love all those words! Frankly, I don't know how one can appreciate the lyrical prose of someone like Penelope Williamson or Judith Ivory if one reads fast.
Besides reading slowly, I read thoroughly. With fiction, I never skip over anything. I always read prologues and epilogs and author's notes. And I never ever read the end first. I guess you could call me a purist where reading is concerned. There was a discussion on another blog several months back about the parts of books people skip over. Descriptive narrative passages. Sex scenes. Long instrospective passages. Violence. I am always amazed that people can do that, can edit out what they don't want to read without knowing if it might be something important. We've talked here about people skipping over prologues, which still puzzles me. The one thing people never seem to skip over is dialog, which is why I always try in my own books to use dialog scenes to drop in bits of historical research, for example, hoping that readers won't skip over it. We often talk about how there is no single correct way to write, that every writer must come to her own process, and that some of that process (eg outlining vs flying by the seat of your pants) is hard-wired in us and we can't change it. I think the same might be true for readers. We each have our reading process, one that works for us, and is probably just as hard-wired. Like the way I could not be trained to speed read. I'm just wired to read slowly.
|
|
candicehern.com |
 |
 |
 |
There is another advantage of slow reading that actually made it a benefit during my college days, rather than a drawback. All those daunting piles of books I had to read ... Well, I never had to read them twice. I never had to go back and re-read parts before an exam, for example -- which meant all my books were in pristine condition when I was done with them, without a single highlighted line or margin note. It was all there, in my head, because in reading it so slowly it really sank in. I can't say that is still as true now that I'm older. But in those youthful days when my brain was in prime working order, I never forgot anything I read.
