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When I was an introverted teenager I read 500 books in one summer. My mom tracked them all in a notebook because she wanted to know just what exactly I was read
by zaphar 12y ago
When I was an introverted teenager I read 500 books in one summer. My mom tracked them all in a notebook because she wanted to know just what exactly I was reading.
To this day I have zero difficulty finishing a book. My problem has always been stopping. I'm practically clinically unable to disengage from a book once I've started. Enough so that I have to meter my reading to prevent myself from disappearing for months on end. Not even the internet has made a dent in that. In some ways I wish I were a little more like the author. It would be nice to not feel a little worried when I start a book that I'll go so deep I'll miss something in the world around me.
- vlasev 12y agoUmm, 500 books in one summer? Yeah right! What kind of books? Were they long? That's over 4 books per DAY! I don't think so.
- oldmanjay 12y agowhy, because you haven't done it? your tone certainly doesn't convince me you have much else as a point.
- vlasev 12y agoWell, no, I don't have MUCH else as a point. If you're reading that fast you probably not going to read as well. Obviously we're not going for perfect retention here but still. That's a ridiculous amount of text to go through in such a short span of time. I feel like at that point it starts being less about reading and more about adding numbers to a list. But I digress.
- itsybitsycoder 12y agoNo, I was a huge bookworm as a kid and I read almost as much as that in the summers. It wasn't about racking up points, just pleasure reading. When you are reading for fun and not for learning, you can go for a lot longer without getting tired and skip all the boring parts. It's not that much different than burning through an entire season of your favorite TV show, or through an entire single-player game, in a weekend.
- walljm 12y agoYou're assuming zaphar reads/comprehends the same way you do. I can't read that fast period, and if i'm reading fast don't comprehend as much, but I have first hand experience with how good zaphar's comprehension is when he is reading very fast. It has some to do with how deeply he concentrates by nature, something he was born with that I wasn't.
- zaphar 12y agoThe sizes varied but most of them were fiction. One day I read seven in an evening. It's not that special. It was the result of a highly insular life spent not doing much other than read.
- gradstudent 12y agoSeven books in one evening? I cannot fathom such a thing. Were these "books" of the comic variety perchance?
- zaphar 12y agoNope, I believe they were teen mystery books probably about 100-200 pages long. I read pretty fast.
- nevster 12y agoWish I could read that fast...
- vosper 12y agoI dunno, I think 4 books per day is do-able if the books are shorter and are an easy read. When I was about 13 I read Red Storm Rising from cover to cover in a day. I checked Amazon just now and it's 830 pages in paperback form. Years later I spent hours getting through the first few chapters of Godel, Escher, Bach. It was such slow going, and required so much thought, that I ultimately gave up.
- sireat 12y agoIt is quite possible to read 500 books over 100 days as a secluded teenager if one is reading mostly 200-300 page books and most of the books do not require perfect attention to detail. A proficient reader can easily read 2 pages a minute, so lets say 1200 pages/2=600 minutes, so 10 hours a day. Seems quite doable for a bored teenager without a computer/tablet/phone/outside activity. I don't think I ever did more than 3 books a day, but still possible to do what OP said. I think many/most of us has have read a page turner in one late night session.
- vlasev 12y agoWell, I guess you are right. I doubt the speed would be consistent over 10 hours but I can easily imagine a bored teenager could sleep 7-8 hours and read most of the rest of the time. So the number drops from maybe about 500 words per minute to something less than that. And that still allows some great comprehension.
- pm90 12y agoYep, I had a similar problem and had to deliberately not read more fiction because I had to study engineering and stuff. Now, with the busyness of life, its a lot easier though. Like you said, the introversion may have made it more attractive to just escape into the excitement of a fiction book.