Fast readers


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The Exchange

Rynjin wrote:


I miss good secondhand bookstores. I'll gladly pay you a dollar for that beat-up old book, read it, and put it on my shelf.

I miss book stores in general. Haven't bought a physical book in years, it's all through my kindle now. Reason is I ran out of storage space in my room (and took over some other shelves in the house), plus paper copies of English books are way harder to come by than electronic versions.

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Which is where my sensitivity to your question may come from Snow, I had teachers tell me and my parents that I was reading too fast and too far above my age level.

Were you reading during class? From personal experience, that annoys most of them to the point that they would say foolish stuff like that.

Liberty's Edge

Well, it was in reading or English class, so it sort of was the point.

Silver Crusade

Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Maps, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Maps, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber
Krensky wrote:
Well, it was in reading or English class, so it sort of was the point.

Ha, that happened to me, too. We were supposed to sit and listen to kids read a book aloud (I've forgotten which one) and I was bored to tears, so I read the entire book in one class while waiting for my classmates to get done reading the first chapter. Was 13 or 14 at that point, I'm not sure why we had a lesson plan better suited to 8-year-olds...

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1) A few days after you finish a book, do you actually still remember in detail everything that happened?

2) Do you have strong emotional reactions to individual scenes in a book? do you feel a connection to characters?
3) Do you ever read slowly? If you do, what are the differences in experience?
4) How the hack can you read so quickly? I'm jealous >_<

1. No, not everything, I remember the major plot points and anything that really grabbed me. The more I think on the novel after I've finished it, the more I retain. I think this is because of my answer to #2.

2. Oh absolutely. Reading a novel is, to me, like experiencing the events as they were written.
3. Depending on the material, sort of yes. Mostly with particularly hairy mathematics, but anything sufficiently detailed could make me reread something three or four times. Which is effectively reading slower, I suppose.
4. Orfamay Quest's explanation is probably the best explanation for me. I taught myself to read early and learned to talk late, so written English is sort of my native language. Spoken English is sort of a 1 1/2 language... not quite a second language but I have a harder time understanding it.

I've thought about this functionally and there are a few techniques I seem to use.
a. Instant recognition of most words. I don't look at individual letters unless I haven't seen a word before.
b. Skipping through common phrases and other language constructs. Phrases that get reused a lot can get compressed, and there's probably a few dozen phrases that I can usually recognize subconsciously from the first couple of words. At that point I start looking for the last word(s) in the phrase. This works great until someone drops the phrase halfway through, at which point I have to go back and reread the whole thing, but it's not much of a cognitive cost.
c. Skipping reams of detail. I've tried repeatedly to force my way through books with incredibly flowery descriptions of everything (purple prose!), but it doesn't work very well. I find it pretty painful. When I was younger I found that it works better for me to just skim through huge blocks of boring description and look for action-oriented verbs so I know where to pick back up.

I'll watch movies okay, but yeah--anything instructional in video is just terrible and I won't watch it. I can read probably a dozen news articles in the time it takes to watch one single news report in video format.

It's interesting to see that there's so many of us.

The Exchange

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It's interesting to see that there's so many of us.

This piqued my curiosity as well. Seeing as how this is not even a literature website but a roleplaying one, there is an almost shocking number of you ubermenschen. My reaction upon seeing how many answers I got was "so, is everyone here a fast reader?


Lord Snow wrote:
Quote:
It's interesting to see that there's so many of us.
This piqued my curiosity as well. Seeing as how this is not even a literature website but a roleplaying one, there is an almost shocking number of you ubermenschen. My reaction upon seeing how many answers I got was "so, is everyone here a fast reader?

Not everyone. I love reading, but ADD presents some interesting challenges. I would certainly like to be able to read a bit faster than I usually manage.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber

I don't really know if I count. I certainly finish reading a page before others when I'm sharing something with someone. And I do tend to be voracious when the book has me hooked.

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