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

[Offred2]

I often see claims like this in the blurb on the cover of books or in book reviews. And every time I wonder - is this the truth? Is it even possible?

I’d say I’m an average speed reader and I read approx 25 pages an hour. So let’s be very generous and say someone can read twice as fast as me, so 50 pages an hour. I saw this claim on a novel that is 400 pages long. That would equate to 8 hours of solid reading time. Is that really possible in one sitting, even getting through it in one day works be a push wouldn’t it? Plus I think your reading speed would slow down over the course of that many hours.

Probably I’m being overly pedantic and it’s just an easy way of expressing how much you loved reading a book, but for some reason it always irks me! Anyone else ever thought this?

I just did a test online 😂 I apparently read 350 words a minute so should read around 175 pages an hour. I also read with a 91% comprehension

Dame it's happening in my head like a film when I read.

DH was baffled the first time we went on holiday together and my suitcase was pretty much all books. He's not a reader.

@pandag what was the book?!

namechanged The Versions of Us - Laura Barnett. Provoked a good discussion at Book Group!

I agree, have never read a book in one sitting and I had a 'reading age' of y9 in y4 at school, off the scale by y8, scored around 140 in verbal IQ tests, have a Masters. I can technically read very quickly, but I miss things, so deliberately slow down to enjoy reading novels.

Interesting to see pps have done reading speed tests online. There must be a balance between speed and comprehension. Tempted to try this - to boast more ofc, sorry.

I read loads on holiday as there are no distractions and could easily read a book in a day. Once I managed 3 in one day. I'm probably not much fun to be away with !

There's an awful lot of people here claiming to read 100 pages per hour. I feel like this is a bit unlikely.

I have definitely done this. Many times. I am a quick reader and have an obsessive personality so I can't put a good book down.

Darn DS for not understanding!!!

It really isn’t. If it’s an easy read (chicklit, let’s say) I can easily read a book in a few hours. It’s not hard at all.

And my OH is much faster than me. He reads a block of lines at once, like literally doesn’t even have to scan the page.

I have a perfect reading speed - I can read upside down at the exact same speed as my OH reads the right way up = he can sit opposite me at the breakfast bar with a newspaper and I don't get annoyed at page turning speed. A novel of say 400 pages is probably less than an evening - 3 hours max?
I suspect those that grew up in the pre-multichannel TV era were accustomed to reading anything and everything they could, I know when I was 7 I had a reading age beyond the book that they tested with (school leaving age was 14 then). I know I do read pretty quickly compared to most people as I get annoyed at slow page turners on the train!

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.

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.

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...

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

Some really interesting responses. I don’t doubt anyone’s answers as to how fast they read, but obviously this thread has prompted predominantly unusually fast readers to comment! The fact that alongside this thread there are threads on challenges to read 25 or 50 books in a year with many many comments and posters I think shows that being able to read a book a day is quite an achievement.

Also I wonder to what extent reading speed depends on what is being read. For instance - do you fast readers who can read a 300 page chick lit book in 3 hours read a ‘literary’ book at the same speed? Or would a 300 page novel by eg Jane Austen or Virginia Woolf with convoluted twisty-turny sentences, intertwining storylines etc, take you longer to read? When I’m reading something I consider well-written (however you define that!) I feel my reading pace naturally slows down to enjoy the language rather than racing on as fast as I can just to find out what happens next.

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!

“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?

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.

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.

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.

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’...

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!

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