The book club moment I realized I was speed-reading wrong for 5 years

I used to blast through assigned chapters in about 20 minutes and feel proud... then at our April meeting on Circe someone asked about a minor character's motivation and I completely blanked. My friend Jenny said she takes an hour just on 30 pages and marks up margins with her thoughts. That's when it clicked that I was treating books like homework to finish instead of stories to sit with. Has anyone else had to unlearn bad reading habits from high school?

2 comments

2 Comments

sarah19820d ago

Oh man, I gotta push back a little on the Holden thing though - Catcher in the Rye is way too short to speed through in 15 minutes unless you're actually just skimming words, lol. That book's like 200 pages, you'd have to be reading a page every 4 seconds. I used to do the same thing you're describing but with my kids' homework actually - I'd skim the SparkNotes and think I knew the book. Then I'd sit down with my son's copy of The Great Gatsby and realize I couldn't name half the characters. Honestly that feeling of blanking at a discussion is the worst, it's like your brain just checks out because you never actually let the story sink in.

eva_ward8820d ago

OMG the "treating books like homework to finish instead of stories to sit with" thing hit me so hard. I did the same exact thing with Catcher in the Rye in school, just blazed through it in like 15 mins and then at the discussion I was like "wait who's Holden again?" It took me forever to realize I was just checking boxes instead of actually reading.