Curious to know how much time you, as a reader and writer, spend reading per day/week. I ask, because people often say "I read it in one day", when speaking about some or another trendy book and that makes me think that either I am not as dedicated to reading as some people, or that I do not have as much free time. I've never finished a novel in one day, and find it implausible that someone could finish a 500 plus page fantasy novel about teenage wizards or vampires before sleep overtakes them. Lately my commute to work is my primary reading time, and that gives me an hour and fifteen minutes to read in semi-peace. I wish I had more free time, but daily life takes up most of the remainder. As a side question, how fast do you read? How many pages (or rather words) do you read in an hour? Approximately, of course.
My partner read every Happy Potter book she got within the day. She killed me when i saw her finished, Under the dome in one day. Being a solicitor, she reads a lot of crap, so i guess she enjoys reading less complicated wordplay. I wouldn't be worried how fast you can read, it really doesn't mean much. Somer books (500 page for example) can take from two days too, two weeks, depending how eager and busy i am at the time.
A 300 page book takes me about two hours to read usually. It is down to seasons in life as much as anything - When I was a kid on school holiday I could easily read 3-4 average novel length books in a day, good day 5 or 6, I read thousands of books. As an adult with three small children that went down to 2 or 3 a month - since I started writing that has gone down to 1 most months but I do still read them in one day as I get hubby to take kids to the park for a few hours and read it then. Most of my books are audio books at present, I listen to BBC radio 4 and radio 7 getting the book at bedtime etc or right now I am rereading the Hitchhikers Guide to Galaxy on tape. I like audiobooks I pick up things I would never have noticed in novel - think it is because when you are 'reading' and doing other things only odd things stick out, rather than taking in the whole text. Everyone is different takes my Dad a few weeks to read a book, as he can read a chapter a night. I can't do that I NEED to know what is happening. If I can read it a chapter a night I won't be reading that author again in a hurry.
I'm a pretty slow reader, I pore over books. Guess it's a habit you pick up when you study them. But yeah, it can take me a week or two to finish a short book. Although, on the other hand, if I'm reading something that's pure trash, I can knock back a couple of hundred pages in an hour. So I guess the longer answer is, it depends?
Is it bad to say that I don't read too often? I've been told that if I read more, my writing will improve as well, but I just get so caught up in writing that reading starts to take a bottom priority. lol Right now I'm reading Ziska by Marie Corelli and God Is Not One by Stephen Prothero. Even with super engaging books like the Harry Potter series, I read each book in a period of about two or three weeks, whereas my sister (who's four years younger than me) finished them the day she got them. Is this a bad habit? Perhaps. Does it bother me? Not really.
If you read something that interests you on this forum, does it bother you that it's only an excerpt? I find myself reading people's posts and being surprised when I get to the end. lol
Frustrates me something chronic or someone sends me a few chapters to read and I am like get that written now I need to know I just cannot put a good book down until it is finished, I don't hear anything or function until it is done If your excerpt or chapters are making me annoyed it is a good sign.
I read pretty fast, but nothing special. I read all the Harry Potters in one day of getting them, aside from the first one, because I was only 8-9, so it took a bit longer back then. Not too much longer, because I didn't have much attention span. And I was reading pretty fast because the trouble with the Harry Potter books was that if you didn't finish them you had school the next day, and everyone would be going out of the way to tell you the ending. Even the teachers did it. So I always made sure to have them read, even if it meant no sleep. For my course I had to read Northern Lights (the Golden Compass), which is a much bigger book, and has a killer hard beginning because it's so boring. I read the opening in trickles here and there for about a week, and once it got interesting finished it in a couple of days, with lots of procrastination. I probably read the last half over about 7 hours here and there? For my course over the last 2 years, actually, I'd read a novel every Sunday night since the class was on the Monday morning. The only novel I didn't read the night before in a novel-intensive course was Wuthering Heights which, like Northern Lights, I'd failed at reading before because I hated the opening, so I read it over a couple of weeks in smaller chunks. Other than that I read some really chunky novels all in one day. But when I'm not being forced to read stuff I'm a chronic "read half, put it down and forget about it" sort of reader. People hate loaning books to me because I'm always like, "yeah, I read half of it... really enjoying it..." "THAT WAS SIX MONTHS AGO, MELLY! READ THE REST!" and usually once they bully me into it I read the rest over an evening and then the next time I see them I'm like, "Fine, here's your book..." ... I drive some people mad.
I'm kind of the same way. My mother suggested Outlander, which she read when she was my age and loved it. So I bought it and got about a third of the way through it, then I could only read a few pages at a time for awhile, up until about the last quarter of the book, and then I read that in a day. But jeez, I was getting a bit tired of the characters having sex every two pages! So it took me overall about four months to actually finish it. lol I will say that I read and continue to reread Ender's Game in a couple of days, but that one is my all time favorite book. Every time I read it, it reminds me of when I was eight or nine years old, reading it for the first time. Those were the days... lol
For me it really depends if I like the book or not. Some books are just so engaging, I can only put them down because I get really dehydrated or because I got too much fluid in me whereas other books are so boring, I literally fall asleep after one page (which often means rereading the same few pages over and over again...) Being native Dutch, I do read Dutch books a bit faster... about 2 pages per minute. For English it's about one page per minute (both for engaging books). I am a fairly fast reader or so I have been told. You acquire reading speed by doing it a lot. In my case, I had to read a lot for my studies so yea... reading!
I love Outlander! Granted, there is a lot of sex, but it's mostly just the first book. It took me two weeks to read that one... I'm not a quick reader, having to stop every few pages to check the dictionary (depending on the book of course). Back when I used to read Harry Potter, I could read a book in one day. I read one of the Twilight novels in one day, too. If the book is a little longer, about 300-400 pages, and a little more substantial, it takes me about 3-4 days. In the end, it really depends on how interested I am on the story, or in how easy it is to read it.
i'll read anywhere from a few pages before going to sleep every night, to a book or more a day, if i've nothing else to do, or am too ill to work...
