How fast do you read (in your head)?

[McEwan]

I hope this is the appropriate place to post this.

I would like to ask how fast you read fiction. I read a lot for my work and I also frequently read non-fiction. Often I find I can read quickly and grasp the main points, sufficiently to do my job and be informed. However, when I read fiction, I find if I read literary novels in a similar way, I don’t grasp the story, and I have to go back to re-read passages. Do you find you have to slow down when you read fiction, and if so, how much? Do you ever read at “talking pace”? Interested in how others read

@CMOTDibbler excellent username .

I can't stand audio books! Too slow!

@EBearhug

Can't quite describe how I do it, but I think my eyeline reads in zig-zags, I look at two or three rows at once, and let my brain sort them into order... something like that anyway.

Saccade. It's how most people read, even if they're not aware of it and think they're reading word for word in an entirely linear way.

My reading speed is about 600wpm, going by that test, but it was a pretty dull piece. I think I would be quicker on paper rather than my screen. I am hyperphantasic, so "see" the images I'm reading easily, and I hear the different voices I'm reading in my head. We didn't have a TV till I was 14, so I read all the time, and I still read a lot, so I agree a lot is down to continuous practice.

I read different things at different speeds, though. There are quite a few work mails I just skim and file/bin, but will read others in more depth after a first skim. I can read fiction quite quickly, but it depends on the writer. I am currently reading a non-fiction book which contains quite a few dates and facts and figures, plus some industry-specific terms I'm not so familiar with, and I also look at some of the footnotes, have stopped to look at a map and so on, so progress is much slower than with light fiction. But I'm not usually reading as a speed exercise, so I don't mind.

What I mean by zig-zags is that I don't follow the rows from left to right at all. My eyes go up and down in 3 or 4 sweeps all over the paragraph and read the words practically in random order, often from right to left as well.

I used to get so incredibly bored in English classes at school, when we were reading a book and had to share with someone. I'd finish both open pages before they were even halfway down the first, and have to sit there for an eternity while they finished. I'd then get told off for staring out of the window and daydreaming instead of paying attention. As for spending an entire term studying one book (eg Jane Eyre), I could have cried from the tedium. Put me right off English Lit for ever, that did.

@horridhorrid my mum wrote me a note every year to take in to say that CMOT will have read the book in the first lesson, please say which books to further extend her knowledge round the subject you would like her to read and I will provide them once she can recite most of the set text.

Audio books are a whole different thing to me. I rarely listen to fiction on audio, and then only things I already like. But a well read non fiction is a thing of beauty to sink into where I don't already have a virtual world set up for it

I read sub-vocally so speed of 284 wpm - oral speed - was no surprise.
Comprehension 80% although some of that was guessing the answer based on common sense and one wrong answer because people who use computers definitely want better monitors even though I remembered the text was about typing faster.

Ds1 takes his information in via audio with a preference for speeded up to get through it quicker. I hate audio books as my mind wanders and lose the gist of what's going on.