I don’t speed read. I don’t want to speed read.
I read fast enough on my own. 75% faster than the national average, according to the Staples test. It says I read 436 words per minute, about the level of a college graduate, which makes sense. 🙂 It makes me wonder about the rest of this country, too. LOL
It says if I maintained this speed, I could read War and Peace in 22 hours and 27 minutes. Which is fine. I could maintain it, as I read the piece in the test rather more slowly than usual because I knew there would be a test afterward. So I could probably read it even faster than that.
It’s just that I don’t want to read War and Peace. I read it once in high school (took about a week, reading a few hours everyday) and I am not ever reading it again.
It also says I can read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling in 2 hours and 56 minutes. The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien in 18 hours and 18 
minutes. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller in 6 hours and 40 minutes. Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell in 3 hours and 24 minutes. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand in 11 hours and 55 minutes. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck in 6 hours and 29 minutes. Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper in 5 hours and 34 minutes. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens in 5 hours and 11 minutes. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain in 4 hours and 11 minutes. To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee in 3 hours and 47 minutes. The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells in 2 hours and 19 minutes.
See, the Harry Potter book takes only a day to read and I don’t actually want to finish books that fast. Especially if I like the book. If I dislike the book, well, the faster the better. (Sadly, my speed decreases when I dislike a book.)
I want to spend a few days with a book, you know? I want to spend hours lost in the world, in the characters. I don’t like it when a book ends too soon.
So . . . I hope I never have to learn speed reading. Too many books end too quickly as it is and I really don’t to speed up the process.
Do you feel like I do? That speed reading allows you to read a little bit too fast?
Related articles
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- Speed Reading (drerindenil.wordpress.com)
- The Power of Books [Imagination] (tonyfiction.wordpress.com)
- A fun little test (aseeofgreen.wordpress.com)
Story Treasury 
That was a fun test. I scored 26% above the average adult reader, although I was reading with the TV blaring and the Hubster talking at me. And no, I like to read the way I eat: slowly, so I can savour every bite/word. 🙂
J.C. Martin
A to Z Blogger
haha yes that would distract me too!
I wish I read faster. Sometimes I feel like the world’s slowest reader. I think my biggest problem is that I start thinking about what I’m reading, get distracted by things around me, and I daydream too much when I’m trying to read. I’ll try the test, but the results may be inaccurate since I’ll be focused on the act of reading and not actually reading like I normally do.
Be glad you can read fast. You will be able to read more books than slow readers like me.
Lee
A Few Words
An A to Z Co-host blog
My Main blog is Tossing It Out
Oh, I took the test and the results were 254 words per minute (or something like that). According to this I read 2% better than the norm. This is depressing. There are a lot of people who read worse than I do according to this test.
Lee
A Few Words
An A to Z Co-host blog
My Main blog is Tossing It Out
I am trying to grateful!
I have the desire to read more, but not to dash through books. Especially the books that are worth reading are worth taking my own plodding, often stumbling time with. Much sympathy, Sonia.
lol thanks john!
I may or may not take the test…don’t want to feel inferior or superior today. FYI, the S post you read on my site (about scuba diving) was from last year’s challenge…I appreciate it but there is new post for this year’s S. Thanks for stopping by and here’s hoping you find your back!
thanks I corrected myself! LOL Not sure how I got to the old post
I may or may not take the test…I don’t want to feel inferior or superior today. The S post you read and commented on at my site was from last years Challenge (scuba diving)…you may have missed this years S post so feel free to come back and visit again. 🙂
I wish I read at a faster pace then I could get through my ever growing TBR list quicker.
yes that is a side benefit of reading quickly!
I read fast, but I think that’s just my natural reading speed. I would like to have time to read even more books–my TBR list is so long!–but not at the expense of enjoying them.
that is exactly my problem!
Let’s see, I got 487. But that was reading something I really didn’t care about, so it was almost as fast as I “read” a textbook for school. I think my actual reading speed is probably about half that when it’s something I care for, and like you, I read slower when it’s a book I’m really enjoying..unless it’s one of those “oh no!” parts then I am blazing.
Weird, I took it again, this time reading slower, and it gave me 689…when I was reading slower (what?). One has to wonder how accurate this measure it. o0
don’t know how to explain that!
I was shocked that I scored 482 since i never considered myself a fast reader! Not a big book reader but I do read a ton of blogs so I guess reading is reading right? Enjoyed this very much Sonya.
blogs certainly count!
I guess I’m a fast reader, but when I find prose that I love, I take my time with it and read slowly. Also when I’m really in love with the story, I often stop before the end, just to hold onto to for a while before reading the last pages.
Hehe sometimes I do that too, just so it won’t be over