“I read it in one sitting” ...really?!

This is Mumsnet op. Everyone here reads literature prolifically

I slow down a bit for more complicated books. Kept a record once of books that I read out of interest to see how many and it was 366 in a year

I just did a reading speed test. 344 words per minute and 100% comprehension - which was lucky as I wasn't expecting to be asked questions! 😁

There were three of us born within 26 months oldest to youngest (plus 2 younger siblings). We grew up reading the same books and urging each other on to finish reading a book so the other 2 could read it. As a result we were all excellent speed readers, My uncle had a speed reading course that we tried but didn’t understand as even on the fastest setting we had no trouble reading and absorbing the information - so, in our minds, what was the point?

I don’t read as many books these days - far too much time ‘wasted’ on the internet - but in the days of new Harry Potter releases used to let my young children read the newly released book during the day and then finish it in one sitting once they went to bed.

@ninkaninus the idiot is a surprisingly quick read. Fewer mental contortions that some of his more ambitious novels. Not very memorable though. I’m pretty sure I read it at least twice before I realised I read it before..,

When i have time i can read a whole book in one sitting, i read like crazy tho and used to get through about 300 a year before kids now I'm about 100/150 a year

If it’s poorly written then a 400 page book could easily be read in 2 hours. A lot of it depends on the quality of the read. And obviously for some people one sitting could be 6 hours long or whatever. I used to frequently read books in a single sitting-it’s better that way,

I'm not even sure I could turn the pages at 100 a minute, let alone read them.

I thought so, Black!

That was me that wrote '100 pages a minute', I meant 100 pages an hour, obviously.

This comes across as really dismissive of other people’s reading styles.

It wasn't intended to be. I am a scientist and a very spatial thinker, can't describe something without drawing it so to not have a 3D picture of the characters in my head would be impossible for me. It's like when I found out some people dream in black and white or some people dream with no sound. Just different, not worse. I'll happily read something with no real plot, is that any different to skimming over descriptive passages?

Anything with dialect or odd spellings slows me right down - Feersum Endjinn is the only Ian M Banks I haven’t re-read, and I never get on with graphic novels.

I overheard my dd1 teaching my dd2 to read in her head (they were sharing a room, dd1 was sick of hearing her sister’s stories) and explaining to dd2 that it was much better because it would mean she could read faster and find out what happened sooner.

I dont like the phrase chick lit...but i dont read what some people describe as chick lit

I find jane austin fairly easy but woukd certainly be slower on dickens for example and some of the more wordy non fiction

Paradoxically, for someone who reads quite quickly I hardly read anymore, probably a handful of books last year.

I’m about to start on Dostoevsky’s The Idiot. I’m certainly not going to read that in a couple of days!

It's interesting the different descriptions of reading, from the PP who talks about it being like watching a film to those who just see the words but don't visualise the characters or bother with the descriptive passages.

This comes across as really dismissive of other people’s reading styles. I don’t visualise characters - I never have. I don’t need to to get great joy from prose. The words are the world - I don’t need to translate them to the visual world to get joy and satisfaction from them. I know a character has unruly hair, for example, and I imagine it and the impact on her personality and actions, and it forms part of my idea of her. I don’t need to build an exact visual identikit to be able to get to know the character.

And ‘skims over’ isn’t the same thing as ‘don’t bother with’...

I think this thread has brought out the unusually fast readers.

This. I read about 30 pages an hour of literary fiction and I'm a faster reader than most people I know. My sister did English at Uni and just didn't finish most books!

It's interesting the different descriptions of reading, from the PP who talks about it being like watching a film to those who just see the words but don't visualise the characters or bother with the descriptive passages.

For me reading is like real life, I love the descriptive passages and can see and smell and feel what is described. I don't want to read faster though, as a student I read 'A Suitable Boy' over many months and those characters were as much part of my life as my real life friends for that time. And it almost feels like sacrilage to have read W&P in a day! There's a different kind of immersive quality when you live with a book for a while. Single sitting reading (which I can do with trashy novels or childrens books) is a different experience for me, like gorging on a box of chocolates but that may just be the effect of bad literature rather than the speed of reading. But when I have hours to read I find I want to stop and reflect for a bit if what I'm reading is any good so don't read constantly.

And as a PP said poetry needs to be read slowly, I actually prefer to read it out loud, although that's a bit antisocial so I tend to whisper to myself.

This is a really interesting thread. It's shed new light on the 50 books a year thread and how some people on there can get through so many books each year.

I'm a slow to average speed reader, I guess. Takes me anywhere between 1-3 weeks to read an average length novel. I find it difficult to concentrate for long periods of time. About 30-45 minute stretches seem to be what I can normally handle (or often what I only have time for).

I tend to get through books on my kindle more quickly than proper books though. I think this is more to do with being able to lay the kindle flat on a surface to read whilst I'm eating/cooking, which is isn't possible with a proper book.

I have a tendency to go over sentences and paragraphs again, even reading at my "normal" speed. If I deliberately try to speed up, I definitely have to re-read bits, which somewhat defeats the object!

Interesting about hearing the words in your head whilst reading. I definitely do this. (Also whilst writing). My husband doesn't do this though and he's a much faster reader than me, when he does read although he doesn't read as many books as I do.

Someone on this thread said that they read Transcription really quickly. I read that in a few days (v. quick for me!), getting through the final 150 or so pages in an afternoon/evening. However, I felt really strange afterwards. I wanted to get through the book to see what happened, but I had trouble sleeping that night as I think I read too fast for my brain to process it all at the time, if that makes sense.

Using typical time to read data from my current kindle read it suggests that the readers of this book (crime fiction) average 65 pages an hour.

“do you fast readers who can read a 300 page chick lit book in 3 hours read a ‘literary’ book at the same speed?”

Depends... some books are a harder read than others and might make me read slower than others.

Austen not so much - I like Austen, but it’s fairly straightforward IMO, I might pause a bit over certain passages because I liked them, but it doesn’t really slow me down noticeably.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez I remember took me what felt like ages...

Dialect I struggle with - that really slows me down, Irvine Welsh books I find really hard for instance... even though that’s my accent, so I’m not sure why?

I love to read and I've always got a book on the go. That said, I can only read in short bursts. I get agitated sitting still for that long. So reading a book in one sitting is impossible for me. Maybe one day!

If its a good book

IF

I can read at about 1000 words a minute

I bought a book teaching you how to do it...and discovered i was already doing it

This was a while back...so its probably 800 or something now

Really ought to retest

But i can easily read 2 books a day on a beach holiday

Going by my kindle app I read about 150 pages an hour... so a 300 page novel is about a 2 hour read so until fairly late on I didn’t understand reviews like that because although I knew that was faster than some people I didn’t think it was really that fast, so I’ve always been a bit like... well it wasn’t a long book, what else would you do with it?

A bit like if someone reviewed a film saying they’d watched it in one sitting I suppose - I kind of thought that’s what you’re supposed to do?

Obviously I realised at some point I’m really quite fast at reading not just a bit faster - but i think I just didn’t really think about it before that because it’s not something I try to do, that’s just how fast I read.

I can also read upside down and mirror writing fast enough to read them out loud at normal reading out loud speed.

“I would be interested to know how fast readers get along with audio books though. They must seem ploddingly slow!”

I only ever listen to them in the car if I’ve got a really long drive or they really annoy me...

I think this thread has brought out the unusually fast readers. I am the fastest reader I know - I have one friend from school who is as fast (with a near photographic memory as well, which I don’t have) but I’ve never met anyone else who is nearly as quick. I’m always the first at work to finish a paper, and reading over someone’s shoulder on the train is torture as I’ve usually read it four times and got bored before they turn the page.

BuildBuildings, one person claimed to read 100 pages per MINUTE! But that must surely have been a mistake.

I am also a very fast reader who consciously has to slow down so as not to miss anything. I usually have several books on the go at once (some are non fiction) and will switch between them. I don't remember having read a book in one sitting in recent years (apart from Hourly Histories, which don't count) but this thread has inspired me to try it occasionally- I think it will help with my concentration.