It's a poll! For you!

[agentotter]

Okay, it's not really a poll. Well, it's not a poll with tickys. I know, I'm sorry, I miss the tickys too, but I couldn't come up with enough ticky-answers to contain the possible width and breadth of your replies, so this is more of one of those, "here is my question, plz discuss" polls.

I was just kind of curious how fast all of you people read, and what your personal reading experience is. I, for instance, am unable to read anything rapidly. I read at the same pace I would if I were reading aloud, or rather as if someone were reading aloud to me. If I'm reading something where the author's voice is familiar, like the Barack Obama book I'm reading right now, or where the characters' voices are familiar, like an SG-1 tie-in novel or something, I "hear" the person's voice as I'm reading. So basically my reading experience is a full-on auditory hallucination, which is always fun, but it's also a little frustrating because it takes me ten million years to finish reading a book, and if I try to read faster, I don't retain any information and the narration in my head sounds like... well, it sort of sounds like David Hewlett talking about black holes.

How about you? Do you read fast? Slow? Only if there is gay porn? TELL ME. I MUST KNOW.

In other news, I think it's safe to say that it's now officially summer. You know how I know? Because I forgot my sunscreen and parts of me are now the kind of alarming and aggressive pink that you usually only find on lawn flamingos.

Comments

[princessofgeeks]

it depends.

i can scan for information, like those speed reading things.

but when i'm reading deeply it is indeed like hearing.

hi!

[j00j]

Um, I read a lot faster than I would read aloud (assuming I'm reading in English-- my reading speed in German is much closer to that of reading aloud). How fast I can read depends on what I am reading. I mean, if it's a YA novel or something else lighter it goes very fast. If it's, say, Shakespeare, that'll be a little slower (especially if I want to think about the language and, you know, properly appreciate all the dirty jokes). If it's somebody like Hegel, that is going to go real slow and I'll probably have to reread things to fully understand and therefore retain the material. But with average English content I can recognize individual words or small groups of words pretty much instantly. To put this into perspective-- If I'm watching a subtitled movie with a group of people, I'll often laugh at the jokes before most others do because I've read them faster. I'm not the fastest reader I know, but I'm pretty fast.

[sara]

I have always read so fast that, as a child, people had real trouble believing I had actually done the reading (it was always kind of satisfying showing them how full of it they were).

Math, not so much my strong suit, but I still read very, very fast.

Though in recent years I've been doing a lot of listening to books read aloud, and I do pick up a lot of details that way that I think I miss when I read to myself. It's a very different experience. I like both.

[oxoniensis]

That clip with David Hewlett and Amanda Tapping is hilarious! <333

I've not really thought about your question before, but I think my reading speed depends on how much I'm enjoying the story. The more I love the story, the slower I read, because I'm savouring and dragging it out. But in general, I read pretty damn fast - it's only the occasional story that will make me slow down much. I still hear character voices though - so maybe I read dialogue a little slower? I'll have to check next time I'm reading!

moving this over to Dth because I'm ridiculous

[sinatra]

I have two settings: 1. reading to get reading done! and 2. reading because the thing I'm reading is awesome!

1. is my default. It's significantly faster than reading out loud, and sometimes I have to check myself from accidentally skipping halfway down a page or something. It's how I read most things, from textbooks to novels to fic, unless I consciously slow down for

2. which is, I think, your default. Articles I find really interesting, meta I want to really understand, etc - I slow down and make sure I'm actually getting everything. In the case of fiction (especially fic and tie-in novels) it means full on Theater Brain Mode, where in my head I do the voices and visualize everything happening as I read it. Because good fic should be seen and not just heard. :D

My general porn-reading is somewhere between 1 and 2 - depending on how seriously I take it (because a hell of a lot of the porn I read, I read only for the lulz), it's usually a mix of Theater Brain with sort of skimming through and something a lot like the censor pixels in The Sims, where my brain automatically goes "La la la I don't actually want to visualize that in detail!" and the rest of it is clear.

#2 has been giving me some trouble lately while reading Star Trek fic, as I keep ending up with John Cho's Sulu speaking with George Takei's voice, or my mental image (and voice) of Spock switching back and forth between ZQ and Nimoy constantly, or Kirk being this really weird mashup of both Chris Pine and Shatner...yeah.