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Showing posts from October 4, 2009

The Art of Reading Slowly, Or, Read Like You Eat

America believes in fast: fast cars, fast food, fast writing. Look at Stephanie Meyer. She wrote Twilight in, what, two months? Wow, that blows my mind. We love speed. I know a lot of people who read fast. I've heard rumors that JFK read some ridiculous number of words a minute--7,000, or something, though I have no legitimate source on that. I took a speed-reading course in college, even taught speed-reading mini-classes as part of my job at the reading/writing center where I worked. I know HOW to read fast. But I don't do it. Not that I didn't understand all that speed-reading stuff. I just didn't like it. I never could make myself practice. I like reading slowly. Not that there's anything wrong with reading fast. I admire those people who can read 2 or 3,000 words a minute. Or even 700. How nice to be so efficient. It has to be good for school. But I read slowly. I mean, really slowly, as in read-aloud-slow, like Charlie Brown's Snoopy from the old P