Do you find that you read faster or slower depending on whether you’re reading something with the intention of learning as opposed to when you read for pleasure? When I read a novel, I can burn right through it at a quick rate but if I’m reading something nonfiction or educational, I read much much slower than I would a novel. I think it’s a combination of the material itself along with thinking I need to absorb every word which causes me to read slow.
I’m reading a Michael Connelly novel right now (the Concrete Blonde) and find it easy to read fifty pages in a day. On the flip side, I’ve been reading bits and pieces of a book about financial intelligence and investing which I’ve been inching through because my eyelids get really heavy and there’s a magnet in the book that draws my head downward. As much as I’d like to learn the lessons of the financial book and read more educational books, it’s really difficult when the material is dry or uninteresting. Just because it’s uninteresting doesn’t mean it’s not valuable, just harder to get through. I have a stack of educational books I need to get through, they’re just not captivating so I can only read bits at a time before I need to read something fun.
There are a lot of topics I’m interested in but they can be so fleeting that I won’t have the attention span to read a 500-page book on a topic that after a few pages starts to put me to sleep. It doesn’t help that I usually end up reading at night or when I’m lying down so it’s an easy transition to sleep. In short, I can read nonfiction and educational books but only in little bits and pieces where I can read novels at length. Do you find this is the case for you too or can you read each with the same vigor and speed? Comment below!
Drew Schroeder 