All Read Out
It's 10:45pm on June 30th. I've read 273 books. I read seven books yesterday and five today. I was aiming for 275 but unbelievably, I'm actually sick of reading. It won't last for long - give me a day or two and I'll want my books back. Besides, I think 273 books in 6 months is a pretty good - if somewhat chronic time-wasting - achievement. Especially given the goal was 300 in a year :p
Hee, dad couldn't believe that the 400-page novel I started reading when he took me to the library was finished an hour or so after we returmed to the library. (And we were only there for a half hour or so.) 28 years and he still can't grasp that I have this phenomenal gift for speed-reading.
And I do call it a gift - it was just something I could always do, it's not something I ever worked at. When people ask me how I can read that quickly (which was better than English teachers not believing that I'd read ahead the whole book in half the period and had gone back to my personal book - OK, not the best idea in retrospect, but lady, I finished the book) it's just shrug and 'IDK, I just can, I always could'. I can just sort of look at a paragraph of a few hundred words and absorb the information the same as you can look at a picture and absorb the image in a second. Well, not quite that quickly, but that's the best way I can describe it - my brain just absorbs the words the way other brains absorb images.
But on the flip side - reading's a fairly cheap addiction. It's free apart from the late fees (which I rarely clock up on account that I read so fast and return the books in a few days for more books) and replacement fees when I don't seal my water bottle properly. And, hey, most of the staff at my local seem to get that I really do read that fast - after all, who the hell would bother returning to the library every day with 3-4 books each time to exchange for new ones? Several times a week for months and months? They've even taken to calling me by my shortened name and not the one that appears on my card :p
Hee, dad couldn't believe that the 400-page novel I started reading when he took me to the library was finished an hour or so after we returmed to the library. (And we were only there for a half hour or so.) 28 years and he still can't grasp that I have this phenomenal gift for speed-reading.
And I do call it a gift - it was just something I could always do, it's not something I ever worked at. When people ask me how I can read that quickly (which was better than English teachers not believing that I'd read ahead the whole book in half the period and had gone back to my personal book - OK, not the best idea in retrospect, but lady, I finished the book) it's just shrug and 'IDK, I just can, I always could'. I can just sort of look at a paragraph of a few hundred words and absorb the information the same as you can look at a picture and absorb the image in a second. Well, not quite that quickly, but that's the best way I can describe it - my brain just absorbs the words the way other brains absorb images.
But on the flip side - reading's a fairly cheap addiction. It's free apart from the late fees (which I rarely clock up on account that I read so fast and return the books in a few days for more books) and replacement fees when I don't seal my water bottle properly. And, hey, most of the staff at my local seem to get that I really do read that fast - after all, who the hell would bother returning to the library every day with 3-4 books each time to exchange for new ones? Several times a week for months and months? They've even taken to calling me by my shortened name and not the one that appears on my card :p