I am lucky enough to be a relatively fast reader, which allows me
to get through masses of "stuff" on the internet each week plus at least
two full length books. However, I came across this delightful item the
other day and thought it might be of interest to others.
"All
my life I have been the victim of a senseless and superstitious feeling
that once I start to read something I must finish it verbatim. There
can be no turning over two pages at a time, no peeking ahead to see if
there's a happy ending. Possibly there lurks in my subconscious the
fear that if I skim lightly through a printed work the author will turn
up to haunt me in some nasty way. Or it may be an exaggerated sense of
guilt like the remorse one experiences after cheating at solitaire.
This
conscientious thoroughness has resulted in a good many hours of ennui
and the dubious satisfaction of knowing that I am fulfilling a cockeyed
duty toward some writer who doesn't give a hoot anyway. For I am a slow
reader. As a child I never learned the modern streamline method of
absorbing an entire paragraph at a glance. My father was my instructor.
We used a small yellow volume entitled "The Land of Song: Book One" and
we lovingly spelled out each sentence, word by word, syllable by
syllable. I still catch myself muttering aloud over posers like
"phthisis". It takes me a week to read a novel and ten days for the
average biography. This naturally narrows down my selection of reading
matter.
But now comes The Reader's Digest to
keep me abreast of the times and to shrive my conscience. The cutting
and skipping has been done in advance by the editors - let the printer's
ink be on their souls! The pieces are of such compactness that even I
can finish three or four in a taxi on my way to a party and arrive
sparkling with information.
Looking back on the
days when there was no Reader's Digest is much like looking back on the
days when there was no such thing as air conditioning. One wonders how
one ever got along without it - at least this one does."
Written by Cornelia Otis Skinner - in 1944!!! And produced here for the comfort of all slow readers, by Rosemary Kahn.
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