Flashback: How to Read More Books

Novel Goals

So many great books to read—so little time!  How can you get through everything on your “to read” list?

I don’t want to read faster because I like to take my time and savor it. But I do want to read more efficiently so I can get more done. Here are two methods that have helped me.

 

Reading_glasses

If you have bifocals and you’ve been reading down your nose with your head cocked up in the air, let me show you a better way!  With prescription reading glasses, you can read “full face” to the book—so much more comfortable and natural. It makes me feel like a kid again, pouring over Eight Cousins head-first! I wear my reading glasses most of the day at work, too, because they are much better than bifocals for working on computers and searching library stacks.

Second—know your approximate reading rate. How long does it take you to read a page of your book? Get a stopwatch and time yourself, either one page at a time, or read several and find the average rate per page. Don’t rush! Your rate will vary with the book, since some pages have more text on them or take more time to ingest. Test yourself on several types of books and you’ll find your range. Mine varies from about 60 to 90 seconds a page.

Why will this help you read more? Because activities that can be planned are easier to accomplish than activities that cannot be planned, or planned only vaguely.

For every book—or stack of books—you want to read, you can form a pretty good idea of how many hours it will take you and then plan accordingly. Without that knowledge, you'll just have to wonder, more or less glumly, how you'll ever get them read, and maybe give up.

This fall I had to read five books in thirty days for work--plus finish House of the Seven Gables just for me. I wasn’t sure at first that this was even possible. But then I added up how many hours they would take, set up something almost like a schedule, and finished them all by their deadlines.

Why not try it? Here's an online stopwatch you can use--you don't even have to make a trip to the sporting goods store before testing your reading rate.

Keeping track of reading rates is fun as well as practical. Want to know how long it took me to read War and Peace? About 26 hours. How long will it take me to read Moby Dick, which I have to do for work also? Looks like about 16 hours. If I read for a half-hour during lunch and another half-hour after dinner, I can finish in a little over two weeks. Even the whole Bible doesn't take so long as you'd think--about 72 hours from Genesis to Revelation.

Now, doesn’t that make reading Moby Dick sound like just a lazy walk in the park? Just think: if you took a vacation from work, you could knock off Moby Dick and War and Peace both in one week! You could be the first person in the history of the world to do that. And with prescription reading glasses, you won't even get a stiff neck.

November 2, 2008

Flashback: A Scent Can Break Your Heart

September, 2009

I breathed in a most evocative scent today. For a moment I didn't know where I was.

I'd been walking back up the mall toward the library at lunchtime when I passed a young woman going the other way. While she was still in view I noticed that her nonchalant air was being undermined by one's sense of its being assumed. That set me reflecting about whether it is possible ever to be nonchalant, if trying doesn't work.

But then all that was forgotten as she passed me and I breathed, in her wake, the exact, long-forgotten scent of the powder hand soap that was used, in the 1960s, in the ladies' bathrooms at White Cloud State Park. I recognized it immediately, as if forty years were nothing. Oh, it wafted me back to that park and to my childhood, to the playground and the foot-trail and the log fences, and it made me want to laugh and cry, because I used to own that smell, I used to carry it away with me on freshly washed hands, and it was part of me. It was a nonchalant part of my world, uncherished and almost unnoticed, because we camped there so often, summer after long summer as I grew taller, and how can something that was a part of me be so gone? So gone.

And what was that smell? Is it really gone forever again, so soon after rushing back to me out of nowhere? Should I have run after the girl crying, "Wait, Wait!"?


Happy happy update, spring 2016:  We took a vacation South this year to look at Civil War battlefields and see some Presidential homes. Waiting for the tour of Benjamin Harrison's house to begin, we looked around in the gift shop for a while. I was interested in the different varieties of artisan soaps they had there, and to my amazement, one was the long-lost scent I wrote about here! Of course I bought it immediately, and now it lives as a sachet in my sock drawer! Every few days I lift it out and travel back to White Cloud State Park again.... 

Flashback: Summer of 2009

Verbal Snapshots from our Vacation

 

Overheard: On a trail at Hartwick Pines forest, a young boy and girl rushing down a hill together: 
     Girl: "I don't want to run, but I'm running! I don't want to run, but I'm running!"
     Boy: "I know!  Our feet are running automatically!"

Overheard: At a craft store, a woman examining t-shirts with Husky dogs on them:
    Woman: "Gawd, I'd love t'git Butch one o'them."
    (Me, unspoken: "Is Butch a boy, a teen, or your husband? Your brother? Does he own a husky dog? Would he really like a t-shirt with a husky on it or is it only part of your illusion of Butch that he would like a t-shirt with a husky on it? How well do you know Butch, really? Would you like a husky dog t-shirt yourself? Or are you actually saying that you wish Butch were the kind of person you could give a husky dog t-shirt to?"  My brain contains an extra nosiness nodule or two, apparently.)

[Although now, five years later, what I notice about this utterance is the wistfulness of it. The impossibility of giving even so modest a gift to someone dear, a world of regret over many such chances gone.]

Observed: From a picnic table by a parking lot at the UP's "Mystery Spot," as I elected to sit quietly and knit in the sunshine instead of going inside:
     A sea gull walking along the road. He glanced about with rapid eye, like Emily Dickinson's bird, but he did not hop sideways nor hop anywhere. Nor did he fly, which you'd think would be his best option for travel. He just walked. Straight on and on, along the shoulder of the road, with no visible emotion, the whole length of the parking lot, at least five car lengths, he walked. Then he stopped, looked both ways--and walked across the road!
     Well! I guess that's why it's called the Mystery Spot.

And now, a real snapshot from my vacation, of an activity which prompted this essential question: When digging in wet beach sand, do fingernails get dirty or clean?

Ben at Lake Huron

Answer: Clean!  I can't help with the eternal mysteries of jaywalking sea gulls, feet that run of their own accord, or the true nature of Butch, but I'm glad we could clear up one question, anyway.