My blogger world and real world concerns have converged today. I’ve been frustrated lately (and forever) with my inability to read quickly. So many stacks of books I want to get to but so little time. Part of it is reading speed and part of it is the 7-8 hrs of sleep my body seems to need (I’ve been wondering if caffeine could help me out here) and part of it is my insane need to exercise for too many hrs.
The convergence:
High Touch Megastore (in person): “I just read Harry Potter over the weekend.” It’s like 600 pages.
Another colleague who is already re-reading HP for the second time, “I read it real fast the first time.”
Unhip who blogged about reading Johnson’s Everything that’s bad for you is good in 2.5 hrs. It’s 200 pages.
Signifying Nothing (in-person a few years back) who said he reads more than anyone he knows and who must read fast as he knows way too much about the history of the Catholic church.
Discussion with SR at SLCC about reading strategically in order to stay up with theory in rhet/comp.
Hearing Middlebrow talk about many books he read in an evening or two and, of course, all the while cranking out pages for his dissertation.
As Signifying Nothing indicated in a recent blog, I generally do not like the interactive blog questions (esp ones about music since I know nothing about music—no time to listen to music when I’m trying to finish a 200 page book I’ve been reading for a month) but I must indulge:
1. How fast do you read? If you read fast, have you always been a relatively fast reader or was it something you learned?
2. What reading strategies do you employ in order to read what’s most important? And if you skip/skim/don’t read every word how do you make sure you are still getting it?
3. Do you annotate the books you read? Why or why not? Also, which kinds of books do you annotate and why?
4. How many books do you read each month/year? Are they mostly quick-read novels or some difficult theory, long, laymen’s science, etc.?
5. Honestly, like really honestly, how many hrs of sleep do you need each night?
Sometimes I have a fantasy about reading non-stop until I’ve read everything I have stacked around my house and everything I’ve been planning on reading. Now that's better than any sexual fantasy I can imagine.
Of course this is a ludicrous fantasy but certainly indicates my ever-present, engulfing at times, guilt about not knowing enough.
Crap, I can’t believe I’ve wasted this time writing a neurotic post while I could have been reading: Into the land of Unicorns, The natural history of make-believe, and Patterson’s second book on children’s lit in prep for my children’s lit class in the fall; Aristotle’s Rhetoric so I can say I read the damn thing; my new Runner’s world so I can get pumped up again about exercise; David Quammen’s Monster of God because I love his wry humor and piercing insights; McKibben’s article in the new Harper’s on Christian Paradox because I am a walking Christian paradox; Walk two moons so I can get it back to Unhip; JS Mill’s On Liberty because it’s seminal; The Crossing by McCarthy because I loved All the Pretty Horses; the stack of papers I must have done by tomorrow at 7am because I must…
7 comments:
Let me begin by saying I read at an average pace. Dr. Write reads much faster. One of our co-resolutions this year was to read fifty new books. You couldn't count books you re-read. So far, I've read about twenty new books this year. The list can be seen at my blog by the way (entitled Reading List 2005), and I've even made a link for each book to amazon--though I do need to add the last few books I've read.
I don't annotate heavily. I used to and I found that my annotations made no sense to me when I went back. Why did I underline this? What is that word in the margin? Instead I now take notes and try to summarize the essence of what the argument is. If I want to go back and see, to use a recent example, what Alan Trachtenberg has to say on Zitkala-Sa in "Shades of Hiawatha," I use the index. Besides, he didn't have a very interesting argument about Zitkala-Sa.
I also don't worry as much when I'm confused. I'm reading (another) academic book on pragamatism right now and the first chapter on Emerson lost me at points. But I got the gist of what the author was saying. Emerson laid the ground work for pragmatism with his idea that we need to get a new angle of vision on things, etc. Good, on to William James and C.S. Peirce.
As to my New Year's Resolution, I think I will end the year having read about thirty something new books--most by new authors (a side resolution I had with myself). If it weren't for this bloody dissertation (and academic articles which do not count on my list), I think I would get to fifty.
Well, let me begin by saying I'm sorry my Harry Potter remark added to any despair you're feeling. I read fast. However, I find that I read far fewer whole books these days than I once did. Instead, I read _in_ many books. Giving myself over to a book like the new Harry Potter always feels like a furtive, guilty, secretive indulgence, when I should be reading Aristotle or Karl Marx or Plotinus or something. On to your quiz: I've always read fast. I read as fast as I can while keeping alert to when I feel I've lost the fenceposts, as it were, of the argument. If I feel that way, I slow down and go back until I find the last place I felt I understood stuff, then proceed. I read opportunistically--trying to find what I want. (that's a phrase I got from one of my old teachers, Henry Staten.) I especially read scholarly and theoretical stuff this way--it's a rare book/article that I find repays reading exceedingly carefully. I do annotate, mainly so that I can find stuff I might use in my own writing--I do this especially when I'm reading opportunistically for a writing project. I have no idea how many books I read in any given period. I think that this year I will have read in a bunch of books, but read very few from cover to cover. To be honest, I mourn the fact that I don't read very many books that way. A couple of weeks ago, I read Tony Bennett's book Outside Literature start to finish (fast, though), and found it very rewarding. I love the experience of rapturous reading, but I don't have it very often anymore. I don't generally get enough sleep--6 or 7 hours a night. 7 is lucky, 6 is more usual. Now that school's rolling around, I expect to get the lesser amount more regularly.
Did I say I read more than anyone else I know? Heh, perhaps I have friends who are illiterate?
Actually I do read a lot, but it is like lisa--mostly sampling these days. I have a bunch of books I'm in the middle of (mostly non-novels since I like to read novels all the way through.) Yes, I read a lot of esoteric stuff that has nothing to do with my career or field of interest. I don't know why, but I get interested in a lot of things.
I've alwyas though of myself as a rather plodding reader, actually, but I guess I must read pretty quickly now that I think about it. I did plow through Hornby's latest novel in 2 long nights, but that doesn't mean much.
I'm not doing well on answering your quesitons, but I'll try more later.
Holy shit Clint I thought you were going to say "I did plow through HARRY POTTER..." So many people have been reading it I guess the H threw me. Thank goodness someone isn't reading Harry Potter. No offense meant to HP lovers.
don't worry Lisa--I had/have/will have plenty of depair concerning this issue with or without your HP comment.
I read fast, but I don't know if I always did. Maybe I got faster in grad school? When I'm reading a good novel I'm really in to, I tend to read really fast, then go back and read a bit again if I feel I missed something. If it's a light, fun novel, I read really fast and don't worry about missing stuff.
For example, when I read Ayn Rand back in high school, I would always skip the big important speeches/monologues that were really just AR speaking via her character. And I didn't miss anything.
As middlebrow said, we are trying to read 50 books. I think I'm at about 20 or so. But I have so many books I haven't read. I used to read everything I started, but life's too short, so now if I don't like something, I put it aside.
I, too, am not reading HP. I feel there will be time for that in my and Son's future.
I need between 6 and 7 hours of sleep to function. I stopped with regular coffee when I started grad school (it made me jittery and I was eating too much to compensate), but MB got me back off the wagon after Son was born. Now I do decaf, sometimes with a splash of caf. Yes, coffee does make it easier to read faster. Also, I skip words. Sometimes.
Oh and 5 hours sleep is the norm. Insane, I know, but I generally can't sleep more unless I'm ill.
I still make pointless annotations, but not as much as I used to. If I'm working on something I generally annotate.
Speaking in a professional sense, I also have purposefully worked into my work week "research time" which I am loath to compromise. Research, of course, is usually reading for folk like us.
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