The headline of a post on the LinkedIn caught my attention.
It read: Speed reading is for fools. Read less, read wise.
Intrigued my its catch headline, I went on to read it.
Volume is easy. Speed is easy. Speed reading is assessed in words, but a good book is distinguished by how deeply you are influenced by its ideas. It’s the integrity and quality of a book, that’s hard.
It’s believing that book-reading is a challenge and as if your speed will be rewarded.
Some might say, “I read a minimum of 1000 books a year.” Who on Earth cares?
If you are accomplishing it that fast it is an exercise far different than what a book lover would do while reading a likable piece. Books aren’t just medals to hang on your wall or to caress your ego with.
Promising writing, or decent anything, delivers us the opportunity to hang back and reflect. It’s nice to read a good novel, publication, fiction, or anything slowly.
Take a moment to evaluate the new ideas you’re welcoming. If you’re reading to discover you want to read thoughtfully.
If you are flipping through pages of a good book, you will be immersed and have little to zero concern about how long it’s taking to know it all.
“The volume is 500 pages? Forget it, I don’t have time.” That’s foolish. You’d instead read five 100-page books just to justify Speed Reading.
Would you reject a 7-course meal at your loved restaurant in exchange for a fast, 3 course one? It’s quality, not quantity that matters.
After reading the post, I browsed further and guess what the studies reveal the following:
- Reading a book takes a lot of time
- The average book has about 90,000 words and the average adult reading speed is 200 words per minute, which means it could take approx 7.5 hours to read (read relish) a book, though skilled readers might do so a bit faster (I am still learning this book reading skill )
- Finally, for any person like me who is ‘still upskilling book reading’, this works out to 90 hours per year or 1.7 hours per week.
- Hence, the daily equivalent is ONLY 15 minutes per day.
So next time, don’t feel guilty when you see someone claiming to be ‘bookworm’ just by stacking his/her living room/office with a bookshelf neatly decked with rows of colourfully jacketed think, thin, long and short book (an unsaid validation of his/her being ‘highly intellectual)…just say you RELISH books!
