Reading Speeds

How fast I read a book – well, I guess, how fast anyone reads a book – is based on a couple of things. Number of pages is probably most basic and most obvious. Interest level, too. Part of “interest level” is anticipation, and that tends to play a huge role in my personal reading speed. In fact, The Last Full Measure, Jeff Shaara’s Civil War novelization focusing on the last year-and-a-half of that conflict, has a big anticipatory flavor for me. Primarily because of my admiration for U. S. Grant, which continues to grow as I read more and more in this genre.

Anyway, I was wondering to myself as I was doin’ spreadsheets ’n stuff in the cubicle, what was my fastest read and what was my slowest? Turns out those are tough questions, even for a bibliophile as myself.

I think my record is reading Asimov’s The Gods Themselves. I read the whole thing, in one sitting, in the bathtub one summer day in the mid-90s. Eight hours. Yes, I spent eight hours in the bathtub. You have to understand, though, that my apartment had no air conditioning, so that was like lounging in a pool for me. Plus, I like baths.

There was a stretch two summers ago where I read six novels in fifteen days. While none were of Biblical proportions, they all had at least 150 pages in their paperback incarnations. They were –

The Book of Skulls by Robert Silverberg
The High Crusade by Poul Anderson
Derai by E. C. Tubb
Hawkshaw by Ron Goulart (okay, this was like 120 pages)
Killerbowl by Gary K. Wolf
Time Out of Joint by Philip K. Dick

What about long reads? Meaning, slow reads? Well, speaking of Biblical proportions, the first and only time I read the Bible cover-to-cover took me two months exactly. And this is the Catholic Bible, which contains seven more books than yer average bible. I think that’s a good benchmark.

So … my first go with The Lord of the Rings took a whole summer, about three months. This was when I was eleven or twelve, so I don’t have definitive dates. My second reading of Tolkien’s masterpiece a little over a year ago took me five weeks. Similarly, each of George R. R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire tomes took me six weeks or so. Richard Adams’ Shardik took an even six weeks, too.

A couple of books took me a little longer to read, somewhere in the order of four months, give or take a week or two. It’s not that I lost interest and stopped reading, no, I kept at it, chiseling away, piece by piece, to glimpse the elegant sculpture beneath. Or perhaps a better metaphor is eating an elephant, one bite at a time. Though I’d probably never revisit them, I’m not disappointed with the time invested.

Those books are –

Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
Imagica by Clive Barker

Happy reading!

Read fast, but read well, my friends!