Reading Rate?

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CharleeVale
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Reading Rate?

Post by CharleeVale » December 14th, 2009, 1:30 am

I've been told lately by my friends that I have a really high reading rate, since I'll go to the store and buy 5 books and be done with them within the week. I figured it out and it's a little over a page a minute. (Evidenced today by me going to borders and reading 75 pages of a book in an hour) I was just wondering what the average reading rate for you is and how this effects how many books you buy etc. I can barely keep my shelves lined with books I haven't read because of this. How about you?

CV

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Hillsy
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Re: Reading Rate?

Post by Hillsy » December 14th, 2009, 11:06 am

I only really read on the commute....but I read rather slowly even when I can cut off the distractions (ADHD can be a bitch for re-reading pages you jsut skimmed over without realising it), but also almost every book I read has 32-34 lines per page rather than the usual 27-30....I mean Dean Koontz - from the corner of his eye I suppose I did about 50 pages an hours (26 lines per page)....I'm reading alastair reynolds - chasm city now which is a whopping 38 lines per page and I'm on about 30 pages an hour max.

But it saves me money, not least of all because of the last 30 books I bought I reckon 4 Max have been under 180K words...means I only need to buy about 4 a month...hehe

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Re: Reading Rate?

Post by shadow » December 14th, 2009, 4:06 pm

Thats pretty fast Charlee. I go at diff. speeds, it honestly depends if I have something else on my mind and if the story is really gripping. If I am made to read a story that I don't seem to like I will tend to go slower, no matter how I push myself to finish that darn book but if I truly enjoy the book I go pretty fast.
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tabwriter
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Re: Reading Rate?

Post by tabwriter » December 28th, 2009, 11:02 pm

It completely depends for me. I have two little kids that suck up energy and brain power. But I can comfortably read two books a week, typically reading before bedtime. I've never 'clocked' myself before, but I would guess I read between thirty to seventy pages per hour, depending on how tired I am.

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CharleeVale
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Re: Reading Rate?

Post by CharleeVale » December 28th, 2009, 11:31 pm

Read a 391 page book in 4.5 hours yesterday. My family was very amused. They say I consume books rather than read them.

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Re: Reading Rate?

Post by kristi » December 29th, 2009, 2:56 pm

CharleeVale wrote:I've been told lately by my friends that I have a really high reading rate, since I'll go to the store and buy 5 books and be done with them within the week. I figured it out and it's a little over a page a minute. (Evidenced today by me going to borders and reading 75 pages of a book in an hour) I was just wondering what the average reading rate for you is and how this effects how many books you buy etc. I can barely keep my shelves lined with books I haven't read because of this. How about you?

CV
I have a friend that also reads crazy numbers of books in a really short time span. I'm jealous - most of my time is consumed with my small kiddos so reading happens late at night. Over the holiday I've read 5 books which has been a treat for me - I'm a fast reader but don't read as much when I'm in the middle of working on a ms. Since I'm only revising right now, I've found more time for pleasure reading.

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Re: Reading Rate?

Post by taylormillgirl » December 29th, 2009, 7:38 pm

Like you, I'm a wicked fast reader. It's one of the reasons I don't purchase books. I check them out from the library by the dozens. Anyhoo, depending on how well the story captivates me, I can finish in a day or two. The exception is one of Diana Gabaldon's books. If the novel is 1,000 + pages of itty bitty text, that's another story! It also depends on the genre. When I read the Dune series and the Lord of the Rings trilogy, I had to read more slowly to focus on all the plot/setting intricacies.
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Re: Reading Rate?

Post by Missy » January 4th, 2010, 4:53 pm

I recently discovered that I average about 50 pages per hour, depending upon the difficulty of the material. When I read YA, it's a little more than 50 pages. When I read George R. R. Martin's work, it's more like 30 pages an hour.

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Re: Reading Rate?

Post by Shirls2010 » January 15th, 2010, 10:36 am

It's hard to say - I haven't timed my reading since I had to read a huge amount of books for English Lit. Then it was about two minutes a page. Nowadays I rather cheat and listen to unabridged audiobooks whenever I'm doing something that won't permit sitting down to read, for example when cooking, cleaning, bathing making beds, getting dressed etc. I "read" the entire Outlander series like that . A good narrator gives a novel an extra dimension and you cannot skim the page! It does take longer though.
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Re: Reading Rate?

Post by LydiaSharp » January 24th, 2010, 1:35 pm

I was talking about this with The Rejectionist the other day. Apparently, she averages 100 pages per hour, and reads STACKS of books within a week. I was highly impressed, and recently timed myself. The result? 50 pages in an hour, and it usually takes me about a week to finish ONE book, depending on what other commitments I have at the time. So I'm a slow reader, but I'm okay with it. Really.
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Re: Reading Rate?

Post by Bryan Russell/Ink » January 24th, 2010, 5:17 pm

Lydia, fifty pages an hour is not slow... it's actually fairly fast. Le R. is simply mad good at reading. Plus she has no skin on her face to slow down the words as they're absorbed into her brain via osmosis.

Though, in truth, I sometimes read that fast. I mean, 100 words an hour for an R.A. Salvatore novel is very realistic for me. But if I'm reading Finnegan's Wake... sadly, the pages will not fly by nearly so quickly. So mine varies a lot. Depends on the text and my approach to it. Some books I'll go through slower just to savour the language. But a thriller or something I'll whip through in a jiffy. I don't want a Cormac McCarthy novel to end, while Agatha Christie novels will be done in less than a couple hours. Gotta know who did it...

But if you studied average readers (and I read about this long ago) they would not be reading close to fifty pages an hour. Plus it's not always about the speed you read... but about finding the speed that's most enjoyable for reading. For me that varies a lot.
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Re: Reading Rate?

Post by JustineDell » January 24th, 2010, 5:29 pm

Ink wrote:
But if you studied average readers (and I read about this long ago) they would not be reading close to fifty pages an hour. Plus it's not always about the speed you read... but about finding the speed that's most enjoyable for reading. For me that varies a lot.

That's a very good way of putting it! Generally my reading speed is about 100 pages an hour. I'm not quite like you in wanting to savor certain books over others, I just always have this urge to come to the end. It's an instant gratification thing....my ocd in overdrive. Of course, I absorb some books better than others, but my speed normally doesn't change.

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Re: Reading Rate?

Post by Nick » January 24th, 2010, 9:15 pm

My ordinary reading rate is fairly slow. I can breeze through a decent-sized book in a day, but then I won't read another book for weeks or even months. Hell, I only read one book from the first day after school got out and the last day of summer break, and that was The Eight Doctors. But that's also because I only have about two and a quarter months to do what I please, and doing things like visiting friends in Dunoon or spending time with the missus take precedence for me. During the school year, I get through more books, but I read at a much slower rate. Some books I breeze through like I did with The Eight Doctors or every weekend when the newest Harry Potter book arrived, I would start reading as soon as my morning cartoons ended and do nothing until I was finished with it. But generally during the school year, I go very very slowly. I could get through Live and Let Die in an afternoon if I wanted to. It took me a month and a half last February. Mostly this is because it never fails that on the days when I do bring something to read, I'm lucky enough to have five minutes of spare time in which to read, and on the days I don't bring anything, I'm bored out of my wits with too much spare time. Plus I get to leave two hours early, and I can't read and walk, and once I get home after having been at school all day, I want to play video games and just relax, not read. Once this year's over, though, I'll have much more spare time, so we'll see. Probably only a book or two a month, honestly. Well and proper book. Short stories and novellas and things...I've no idea.

Plus I just read slowly in general. I'm nowhere near as slow as most people I know, but I'm still a bit on the slow side. The Eight Doctors is a Terrance Dicks novel. Terrance Dicks writes incredibly fatuous prose -- although it is probably the most engaging prose I've ever read, and frankly all of the positives about his writing far outweigh that negative. Most people could get through something as shallow as a Terrance Dicks book in two or three hours if they set themselves to it. I started it at a bit before eleven and didn't finish until a bit before five-thirty, stopping only once to take a piss.

Oh, and it does depend what I'm reading. I get through Agatha Christie and Bernard Cornwell fast, Ian Fleming and Ian Rankin not quite so much, just as a couple of examples.

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Re: Reading Rate?

Post by Polenth » January 26th, 2010, 10:01 pm

I read at the speed I talk when it's a book I want to read. I've read up to three books a day. I usually have long cooldown periods between books though, so I don't read quickly if you average it out over a few months.
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Re: Reading Rate?

Post by Anavaz » February 2nd, 2010, 3:54 pm

CharleeVale wrote:Read a 391 page book in 4.5 hours yesterday. My family was very amused. They say I consume books rather than read them.

CV
I'm there with you. I can read a 300+ book in as little as 3 hours. My husband says I don't enjoy them because I read them too fast. It's not that, it's just that I get so into the story I can't put it down. This of course has made my book count very high, I don't have space for my books anymore and I refuse to give them away, they are my babies. I love books, love the feel, smell and everything that goes with them. When I buy books I buy 7-8 at a time and they never last more than a week. I've sacrificed sleep for reading, lol. Now I have a baby so I have less time to read, but I still find how to get a book done before 24 hours have passed.

One good thing has come out of this though, I am a law student therefore I have to read a lot of cases, since I'm a trained reader I can do it pretty fast, that a deffinite plus.

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