do most folks do this?
do YOU???????
when i sit down to read i try to pace myself to make sure i am focused. i generally try to keep my pace above 20 pages/hour and no greater than 35 pages/hour. i find that if i go less than 20 pgs/hr on a text then i am probably wasting too much time daydreaming, checking my phone, staring at an insect trying to get in my window, etc. if i go more than 30 pgs/hr, definitely 35 pgs/hr, then i find i wasn't reading closely enough.
i generally like to read between 25 and 30 pgs/hr. this make sense for most novels i try to read. that comes out to around a page for every 2 minutes. i think that is about how much time should be spent on a page (for my personal levels, in terms of processing a text). for a magazine, it is probably faster than that, as their are ads and/or material that i will most likely skip over. if it is something like a "norton critical edition" of an older novel or if it is a longer story or short novel in a "norton anthology" then i probably end up reading less pages per hour, because more text is usually condensed into the pages. of course, in those cases the text itself probably doesn't cover as many pages, but the whole "norton" thing also ends up slowing down the pace in other ways, because the text becomes a bit more disorienting or exhausting due to so many words being on a single page.
for a book of philosophy or other more dense non-fiction, my usual goal of 25-30 pgs/hr usually gets cut in half. this is what i have been noticing the past month or so when i pick up anti-oedipus. i realized each page was taking around 5 minutes, because that shit is dense. most other philosophy i have read is roughly the same in terms of the reading pace.
if its an online text, the pace generally varies more widely. for example, i read most the pangur ban party e-books in a single sitting. if i wasn't jumping around the internet doing other things i would probably finish them in around an hour.
anyways, other than "anti-oedipus", i have been reading "vacation" by deb olin unferth, and i am also in the middle of the first (out of 3) novella in rick moodys "right livelihoods".
i have my friend ben nadler's first novel too, i am working on that.
otherwise, most of the reading i am doing is finishing a melville novel per week for a seminar i am taking, and going over the reading for my class i am teaching.
i am teaching a freshman composition course, by the way, made up of prospective engineering students. i am supposed to ground them in technical writing but also try to get them interested in the humanities. some of the authors i have them reading are paul goodman, e.t.a. hoffman, j.g. ballard, manuel delanda, david foster wallace, franz kafka, mike davis, jane jacobs, george ritzer, maybe galilleo, and/or a few others. they are going to be watching "existenz" and either "blade runner" or "pirates of silicon valley." feel free to give me any suggestions related to this body of work, or talk shit about me and/or the material i am teaching.
here are links to things i have been reading recently on the internet:
my friend homer has a blog called "math-stract".....he used to have a similar blog by the same name that was collaborative, and now he's starting it up again, i guess.
dierk's e-book at pbp
a quick post by ken baumann at htmlgiant about michel houellebecq (one of my favorite writers, probably top 10, in case you never read this blog or don't know me)
my friend tracy o'neil has a story up at the center for fiction.....she also writes lots of book reviews, including one recently in the collagist
i will see you all again shortly, i hope, in this life or the next
addendum:
i am planning to write reviews of the following books over the next several months, let me know if i can publish them on your site, otherwise i may end up annoying you or just posting them on here. i also started writing some and then i realized i wanted to take the craft of writing a review more seriously than i have on this blog and in other publications, so i am trying to study reviews and figure out my own perfect aesthetic niche...............here are the texts i want/plan to review:
scott mcclanahan------stories V!
james payne---------austerity pleasures
mark leidner---------the angel in the dream of our hangover
ben nadler------harvitz, as to war
electric literature-------no.5
playboy ----------november 1979
mike bushnell-------traumahawk
sam pink-----------the new sam pink bundle of fun
no colony-------------no.1
mike young-----we are all good if they try hard enough
frank o'hara---------lunch poems
blake butler---------there is no year
megan boyle--------selected unpublished blog posts of a mexican panda express employee
do YOU???????
when i sit down to read i try to pace myself to make sure i am focused. i generally try to keep my pace above 20 pages/hour and no greater than 35 pages/hour. i find that if i go less than 20 pgs/hr on a text then i am probably wasting too much time daydreaming, checking my phone, staring at an insect trying to get in my window, etc. if i go more than 30 pgs/hr, definitely 35 pgs/hr, then i find i wasn't reading closely enough.
i generally like to read between 25 and 30 pgs/hr. this make sense for most novels i try to read. that comes out to around a page for every 2 minutes. i think that is about how much time should be spent on a page (for my personal levels, in terms of processing a text). for a magazine, it is probably faster than that, as their are ads and/or material that i will most likely skip over. if it is something like a "norton critical edition" of an older novel or if it is a longer story or short novel in a "norton anthology" then i probably end up reading less pages per hour, because more text is usually condensed into the pages. of course, in those cases the text itself probably doesn't cover as many pages, but the whole "norton" thing also ends up slowing down the pace in other ways, because the text becomes a bit more disorienting or exhausting due to so many words being on a single page.
for a book of philosophy or other more dense non-fiction, my usual goal of 25-30 pgs/hr usually gets cut in half. this is what i have been noticing the past month or so when i pick up anti-oedipus. i realized each page was taking around 5 minutes, because that shit is dense. most other philosophy i have read is roughly the same in terms of the reading pace.
if its an online text, the pace generally varies more widely. for example, i read most the pangur ban party e-books in a single sitting. if i wasn't jumping around the internet doing other things i would probably finish them in around an hour.
anyways, other than "anti-oedipus", i have been reading "vacation" by deb olin unferth, and i am also in the middle of the first (out of 3) novella in rick moodys "right livelihoods".
i have my friend ben nadler's first novel too, i am working on that.
otherwise, most of the reading i am doing is finishing a melville novel per week for a seminar i am taking, and going over the reading for my class i am teaching.
i am teaching a freshman composition course, by the way, made up of prospective engineering students. i am supposed to ground them in technical writing but also try to get them interested in the humanities. some of the authors i have them reading are paul goodman, e.t.a. hoffman, j.g. ballard, manuel delanda, david foster wallace, franz kafka, mike davis, jane jacobs, george ritzer, maybe galilleo, and/or a few others. they are going to be watching "existenz" and either "blade runner" or "pirates of silicon valley." feel free to give me any suggestions related to this body of work, or talk shit about me and/or the material i am teaching.
here are links to things i have been reading recently on the internet:
my friend homer has a blog called "math-stract".....he used to have a similar blog by the same name that was collaborative, and now he's starting it up again, i guess.
dierk's e-book at pbp
a quick post by ken baumann at htmlgiant about michel houellebecq (one of my favorite writers, probably top 10, in case you never read this blog or don't know me)
my friend tracy o'neil has a story up at the center for fiction.....she also writes lots of book reviews, including one recently in the collagist
i will see you all again shortly, i hope, in this life or the next
addendum:
i am planning to write reviews of the following books over the next several months, let me know if i can publish them on your site, otherwise i may end up annoying you or just posting them on here. i also started writing some and then i realized i wanted to take the craft of writing a review more seriously than i have on this blog and in other publications, so i am trying to study reviews and figure out my own perfect aesthetic niche...............here are the texts i want/plan to review:
scott mcclanahan------stories V!
james payne---------austerity pleasures
mark leidner---------the angel in the dream of our hangover
ben nadler------harvitz, as to war
electric literature-------no.5
playboy ----------november 1979
mike bushnell-------traumahawk
sam pink-----------the new sam pink bundle of fun
no colony-------------no.1
mike young-----we are all good if they try hard enough
frank o'hara---------lunch poems
blake butler---------there is no year
megan boyle--------selected unpublished blog posts of a mexican panda express employee
2 comments:
i don't think i consciously try to set a pace. i think i usually let the book and surroundings determine it, as to allow for more natural reading time. if it's not working out, then i just close the book and try again later. but i agree: fiction goes fairly quickly, philosophy slightly slower.
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