Noodling about reading speed...

[quasigeostrophy]

For the readers and writers out there, I'm fishing for comments on a theory. I initially came up with this yesterday on the plane from MSP to SJC while reading somewhere in the middle of Guy Gavriel Kay's Tigana, a beautiful and quite rich fantasy story with which I'm totally fascinated. Maybe I'm making more out of this than there is, and I'm just getting older and slower, but I always thought of myself as a very avid, voracious reader. I used to be extremely fast, too. For the last several years, I've been somewhat envious of computerchix's ability to read somewhat faster than I do, and I started discussing this theory very recently with semperfiona, who recently posted about finishing 400+ pages in about 3 hours. The thing is, I can recall when I used to be able to do that as well, and this is where my theory comes in...

I can recall being able to read, comprehend, recall, and enjoy what I've read at a very fast pace from at least my early teens, if not before, through sometime in my college years. In college, as a Communication major, I was heavily trained in public speaking, pronunciation, and other aspects of speech performance, including reading aloud. My focus was in video production (I've done camera work, editing, the whole gamut, at one time or another), so I also developed something embryonic in my creative psyche into a well-honed skill and sense of visualization - taking the printed word and translating it into imagery. Thinking about my slower reading speed since those days, I did a mental "test" on the plane yesterday. I read a page of Tigana as quickly as I could. I still understood it and was able to recall it after stopping for several minutes, but I found I didn't enjoy it. I went back and reread the same page, and had an epiphany - I'm reading to myself only as fast as I might read aloud (which by nature is much slower), putting in character inflections and so forth. Something I was also doing that I didn't realize until deciding today to make this post was visualizing the scenes and action in great detail, as if I were watching a film, even directing it a little in my head. I'm very "directorial" with video/film - I'm constantly taking little scenes and translating them to the screen, scoring them, etc. Now, I know when everyone reads there is imagination and visualization going on in zir brain as a stimulus response, so I don't think I'm unique with that, but I really think that my career training in visual media has essentially installed a "governor" on my reading speed. At least I can say this about reading fiction. When I'm reading non-fiction, I have noticed that I'm still nearly as fast as I've ever been. Otherwise, I'd more readily admit that my brain is just getting older and I need to get over it. :-)

Comments

[firinel.livejournal.com]

I do much the same way with fiction. On the other hand, I simply cannot read nonfiction if not given days, even weeks, to read it over and over. I follow fiction best because it is set up in a visual manner, and very much a social manner, with characters interacting and talking. I find if there's a period of time where there isn't that interaction, I get antsy with the story. Since there's often not much of that in non-fiction, I just end up drifting, not getting most of it, and having to reread whole characters over again.

Do you think that as any barring to your theory?

[quasigeostrophy.livejournal.com]

I really don't know. Your comments seem to tell me (and please correct me if I'm misinterpreting) that you do what I do with fiction, but are slower with non-fiction than I am, but I'm not sure they help me explain why I'm slower with fiction now than I used to be. I'm probably just overanalyzing things and am getting older. ;-)