Reading

"Studies show that people who read at or above the college level all read at about the same speed when they read for pleasure. Within the contentious world of reading theory, there is unanimity on this point. When you factor out the amount of time spent thinking through complex and unfamiliar concepts—a rarity when people read for pleasure—reading is an appallingly mechanical process. You look at a word or several words. This is called a “fixation,” and it takes about .25 seconds on average. You move your eye to the next word or group of words. This is called a “saccade,” and it takes up to about .1 seconds on average. After this is repeated once or twice, you pause to comprehend the phrase you just looked at. That takes roughly 0.3 to 0.5 seconds on average. Add all these fixations and saccades and comprehension pauses together and you end up with about 95 percent of all college-level readers reading between 200 and 400 words per minute, according to Keith Rayner, a psycholinguist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The majority of these college-level readers reads about 300 words per minute. What about the far end of the bell curve? Isn’t it possible there are a handful of super-smart Aloysiuses out there who can read much faster than everybody else? John F. Kennedy was said to read 1,200 words per minute. The speed-reading huckster Evelyn Wood claimed that a professor boasted of consuming more than 2,500 words per minute “with outstanding recall and comprehension.” A 1963 study purported to find one person who read 17,040 words per minute. The last two examples are gleaned from a 1985 study in Reading Research Quarterly, by Ronald Carver, a professor of education research and psychology at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Carver thinks all three of these examples are bunk. JFK, he says, probably read 500-600 words a minute—that’s very fast—and perhaps could skim 1,000 words per minute."

"I write what I would like to read – what I think other women would like to read. If what I write makes a woman in the Canadian mountains cry and she writes and tells me about it, especially if she says ‘I read it to Tom when he came in from work and he cried too,’ I feel I have succeeded."

"When we read, we are not looking for new ideas, but to see our own thoughts given the seal of confirmation on the printed page. The words that strike us are those that awake an echo in a zone we have already made our own—the place where we live—and the vibration enables us to find fresh starting points within ourselves."

"Properly, we should read for power. Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one's hand."

"O thou covering yourself up! wake to worship during the night, even briefly, half of it, or shorter of it, or add to it, Then read Quran calmly. Wake by night is surely the appropriate and the most effective time for contemplation. Truly by daytime you have prolonged with occupation."

"Reading is almost exactly the same as cartwheeling: it turns the world upside down and leaves you breathless."

"You should read only when your own thoughts dry up, which will of course happen frequently enough even to the best heads; but to banish your own thoughts so as to take up a book is a sin against the holy ghost; it is like deserting untrammeled nature to look at a herbarium or engravings of landscapes."

"Reading is a mere makeshift for original thinking."

"Reading is thinking with some one else's head instead of one's own. But to think for oneself is to endeavour to develop a coherent whole, a system, even if it is not a strictly complete one. Nothing is more harmful than, by dint of continual reading, to strengthen the current of other people's thoughts. These thoughts, springing from different minds, belonging to different systems, bearing different colours, never flow together of themselves into a unity of thought, knowledge, insight, or conviction, but rather cram the head with a Babylonian confusion of tongues; consequently the mind becomes overcharged with them and is deprived of all clear insight and disorganised. This condition of things may often be discerned in many men of learning, and it makes them inferior in sound understanding, correct judgment, and practical tact to many illiterate men, who, by the aid of experience, conversation, and a little reading, have acquired a little knowledge from without, and made it always subordinate to and incorporated it with their own thoughts."

"People who spend their whole life traveling abroad end up having plenty of places where they can find hospitality but no real friendships. The same must needs be the case with people who never set about acquiring an intimate acquaintanceship with any one great writer, but skip from one to another, paying flying visits to them all."

"He hath never fed of the dainties that are bred in a book; he hath not eat paper, as it were; he hath not drunk ink: his intellect is not replenished; he is only an animal, only sensible in the duller parts."

"Two experiments demonstrated that subvocalization is of value in reading for certain types of meaning. Blocking subvocalization by requiring subjects to count or say “cola-colacola …” aloud impaired their reading comprehension but generally not their listening comprehension. The effect of blocking subvocalization was found to be specific to tests that required integration of concepts within or across sentences, as contrasted with tests that required only memory of individual word concepts. Two hypotheses were offered: first, that subvocalization results in a more durable memory representation needed for integration of concepts; and second, that subvocalization enables a prosodic restructuring that makes information needed for sentence comprehension accessible."

"With our multifarious duties we may not be able to call upon some aged or invalid sister, to cheer her, but we may lend her a book to read at pleasure, and peradventure to the strengthening of her purpose, the cheering of her life, and the edification of her mind. Likewise after reading a good book, pass it to a sister, saying, “I commend this book to you. It has instructed me and may edify you, and when you have read, return, that I may lend again.”"

"It is the greatest achievement of my life. Yes, I have used that word: a great achievement. My learning to read was an achievement. Nobody knows that but me."

"“What is it exactly that you do with a book?” “You read it.” “Oh,” she said. And then, “What does read mean?” I nodded. Then I began turning the pages of the book I was holding and said, “Some of these markings here represent sounds. And the sounds make words. You look at the marks and sounds come into your mind and, after you practice long enough, they begin to sound like hearing a person talking. Talking—but silently.”"

"Reading is the subtle and thorough sharing of the ideas and feelings by underhanded means. It is a gross invasion of Privacy."

"Bob seems to know almost everything; but he doesn’t know when or why people stopped reading. “Most people are too lazy,” he said. “They only want distractions.”"

"I must get inside that library! I must have books again. If I cannot read and learn and have things that are worth thinking about, I would rather immolate myself than go on living."

"The woman beside me hesitated a moment, and then said softly, “This man is different, Mary. He’s a Reader.”"

"I feel free and strong. If I were not a reader of books I could not feel this way. Whatever may happen to me, thank God that I can read, that I have truly touched the minds of other men."

"Studious let me sit, And hold high converse with the mighty Dead."

"Nothing is more commonplace than the reading experience, and yet nothing is more unknown. Reading is such a matter of course that at first glance it seems there is nothing to say about it."

"This experiment addressed the question of whether reading comprehension and speed could be predicted by eye fixations. From a sample of university students who completed tests of reading comprehension and vocabulary, we selected a group of highly skilled readers and a group of less skilled readers. These two groups then read sentences as their eye movements were monitored, with fixation locations and durations recorded. A discriminant function analysis showed that fixation duration was a successful predictor of reading comprehension, but that the number of fixations, regressive fixations, reading speed, and vocabulary were not reliable predictors. A multiple regression analysis revealed that reading speed was predicted by the number of fixations, the average fixation duration, and the duration of the final fixation upon the sentence, but there was no relationship with reading ability. Highly skilled readers are those who can extract information efficiently, but are not necessarily those who have fast overall reading rates."

"If one's mind correctly gauges the import of these words, then, in the blink of an eye, one's qualities of wisdom and severance will become so great as to defy measurement and one's spiritual understanding will become unfathomably deep.If, however, one disingenuously seizes on passages out of context or, due to personal sentiments, distorts the instructions of the text, then the months and years will be needlessly drawn out while actual realization will have no basis for development. One's circumstance would then be like the pauper who spends his time calculating the wealth of other men. What possible benefit could this have for oneself?"

"Reading is to the mind, what exercise is to the body. As by the one, health is preserved, strengthened, and invigorated: by the other, virtue (which is the health of the mind) is kept alive, cherished, and confirmed."

"Reading maketh a full man."

"Read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest."

"In science, read, by preference, the newest works; in literature, the oldest. The classic literature is always modern."

"If time is precious, no book that will not improve by repeated readings deserves to be read at all."

"We have not read an author till we have seen his object, whatever it may be, as he saw it."

"The mind, relaxing into needful sport, Should turn to writers of an abler sort, Whose wit well managed, and whose classic style, Give truth a lustre, and make wisdom smile."

"But truths on which depends our main concern, That 'tis our shame and misery not to learn, Shine by the side of every path we tread With such a lustre he that runs may read."

"The delight of opening a new pursuit, or a new course of reading, imparts the vivacity and novelty of youth even to old age."

"I like to be beholden to the great metropolitan English speech, the sea which receives tributaries from every region under heaven. I should as soon think of swimming across the Charles river when I wish to go to Boston, as of reading all my books in originals, when I have them rendered for me in my mother tongue."

"My early and invincible love of reading, * * * I would not exchange for the treasures of India."

"The sagacious reader who is capable of reading between these lines what does not stand written in them, but is nevertheless implied, will be able to form some conception."

"Zwar sind sie an das Beste nicht gewöhnt, Allein sie haben schrecklich viel gelesen."

"In a polite age almost every person becomes a reader, and receives more instruction from the Press than the Pulpit."

"The first time I read an excellent book, it is to me just as if I had gained a new friend. When I read over a book I have perused before, it resembles the meeting with an old one."

"Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it."

"The foolish read to escape reality; the wise surrender to it."

"Books have always a secret influence on the understanding; we cannot at pleasure obliterate ideas: he that reads books of science, though without any desire fixed of improvement, will grow more knowing; he that entertains himself with moral or religious treatises, will imperceptibly advance in goodness; the ideas which are often offered to the mind, will at last find a lucky moment when it is disposed to receive them."

"A man ought to read just as inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good."

"What is twice read is commonly better remembered than what is transcribed."

"It may be well to wait a century for a reader, as God has waited six thousand years for an observer."

"I love to lose myself in other men's minds. When I am not walking, I am reading; I cannot sit and think. Books think for me."

"He that I am reading seems always to have the most force."

"And better had they ne'er been born, Who read to doubt, or read to scorn."

"Read Homer once, and you can read no more, For all books else appear so mean, so poor, Verse will seem prose; but still persist to read, And Homer will be all the books you need."

"He that runs may read."