Tuesday 30 October 2018

How fast could CS Lewis read? How fast can anybody read?

CS Lewis was renowned as a fast reader - and one with outstanding recall and comprehension of what he wrote. Kevin McCall estimates how quickly Lewis could read (about 550 words per minute/ 70 pages an hour); and puts this into a context of research on reading speeds.

My own natural reading speed has always been much slower than this - probably about 100 pages per day; so, even as a teenager the Lord of the Rings took me about a fortnight to complete (given that I had to read, and do, other things as well as read!).

Any faster felt forced and was less enjoyable; it would be a torment to read at the necessary rate for a course of study in English Literature - a novel every day or two; quite apart from the fact I would have-to to read things I didn't want to read.

Of course I was adept at 'skimming' of online text when I was the editor of Medical Hypotheses; since I had to 'read' and select everything for a large monthly journal. Let me see... at peak there was probably about 240 pages/ 200,000 published words per month selected from 600,000 words submitted - which makes very roughly 20,000 words per day to read/ skim - evaluate - select? But this was a part-time job (I was 80% full time academic); so...

Well the skim-reading must have been very fast, and needed to be very fast. But Not too fast for me, judging by the journal's performance indicators. The fact is that I had a natural aptitude for that specific job! - and it shows what is possible (even for a slow reader, like me) when vocation and avocation are aligned. 

3 comments:

Matthew T said...

My own natural reading speed has always been much slower than this - probably about 100 pages per day...

Any faster felt forced and was less enjoyable; it would be a torment to read at the necessary rate for a course of study in English Literature


I have the same problem, despite enjoying English literature, and having had a minor in History at school, so that I'm quite pleased to hear you say this!

a_probst said...

I wonder if C.S. Lewis experienced the actual reading as 'fast'. I would guess that if we could auralize the mind's ear of even average readers the speed would be noticeably higher than typical speech. To someone quick-minded perhaps the outside world seems to slow down while he is immersed in reading.

Hrothgar said...

@a probst - Well, I am apparently an extremely quick reader, and I must say I have always experienced it as simply normal. To me, it is rather baffling that most other people manage to read so slowly, and the fact comes as a fresh surprise, every time I am reminded of it! I don't think subjective time passes slower for me when reading though. If anything it passes quicker, as I sometimes find myself looking up to check the time when reading, feeling like hardly any time at all has passed since I last checked, and find that it was in fact an hour or more.

@Bruce - Well, for a contrast, I first read LOTR at the age of about 16, not really knowing what to expect as I had only vaguely heard of the book at the time, but wanting to find out for myself.

So far as I remember, I started it very early in the morning of one day, was soon hooked, then did as little else as possible till I had finished it in the small hours of the next. I might perhaps have finished it on the same day, but had to read it in two sessions, interrupted in the middle by a long car journey from the Southwest to London (and possibly some other things I don't now remember). I don't remember how much attention I gave to the appendices at the time, or if that particular copy even contained them.

I don't think I'd want to read it so quickly now though, even if my family (including a very jealous little daughter) and the various animal inhabitants of my home permitted me to read for that long uninterrupted (which will not happen). I think my last re-reading a year or two ago may have taken about three days, with interruptions galore.

Compared to when I was a teenager there would have been: much more deliberate perusal of the verse (which I didn’t much appreciate back then, compared to now), possibly including the reading of some aloud; frequent pausing after favourite scenes to savour them better, and possibly re-reading parts to more fully appreciate the effects; careful reading of the entire appendices, etc.

I would find most modern English Literature courses intolerable myself – not, obviously, due to the amount of reading, but due to the necessity of having to pretend to take a large proportion of reading material seriously that I would in fact find extremely objectionable, not be willing to waste my time on in other circumstances, and not be at all motivated to then write about, except by way of disparagement (which would probably not go down too well!).