A Study on my (not particularly fast) Reading Skills

I have noticed in my life, that I have my hobbies and my perceived hobbies. What I mean is, there are lots of things I find myself wanting to do, on a theoretical level, but never actually investing in. This is a depressing situation, when you think about it. One of those things is reading. I have always loved the idea of reading but never really made a habit out of it. On top of that, I'm distracted rather easily, which makes reading anything, particularly non-literature an exhausting and frustrating experience. However, there was a time when I managed to almost make a habit out of it. It but a few years ago that I read something before going to sleep. One of my teachers once said that reading on the bed before sleeping is a cure for insomnia, because it makes your mind make you feel tired in order to escape from the labour. While I can't say I fully endorse such sentiments, I can't deny that that time is not the best for understanding concepts and clear thinking.

Then, it happened, during a visit to my godfather. He has a really immense bookcase in his house, it's actually a whole room. He asked me whether I read books and I replied that I did, almost every night, before bed. He frowned a little and said "Well, I only read in the morning, so I don't miss anything". So, that's how I stopped reading before bed. Then, I started reading books during the breaks in university, but that's a different story.

So, yes, I read: occasionally, some periods more, others less. These days, it's the latter. I started reading a book containing all the works of Edgar Allan Poe a few months ago. Unfortunately, I only went as far as the first story, "The Murders in the Rue Morgue". It's a pity, too, because although that story didn't leave a really good impression on me, I loved the way it was structured and the way Poe had with words.

So, for this day's novelty, I took the challenge of starting reading the book again, as fast as I could, to see how far I could get in one hour. The second story is "The Mystery or Marie Rogêt". It starts on page 26 and ends on page 61. The results were really discouraging. I managed to read until page 49, which means one hour's worth of reading equals to a mere 23 pages read. That's about 0.4 pages per minute, which -with some rough calculations- amounts to about 208 words per minute. Even with my concentration constantly breaking, other thoughts creeping in my mind, especially ones about how much time I had left, I really expected more out of myself. I always thought I was a fast reader; apparently, I was wrong. Perhaps with enough training, I may learn reading faster.

Poe's style didn't help either. The story was about how the narrator and his genius-of-analyical-thinking friend tried to solve the mystery of a young lady's murder. It was full of supposed newspaper excerpts and huge monologues highlighting every logical or factual mistake of the aforementioned newspaper editors. Even with my slow reading and re-reading of certain part, I cannot in good conscience say I was fully confident in knowing what was going on. Oh, well. Still, I am looking forward to finishing this story.