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I speed read pulp novels, and have for decades. From Doc Savage to Honor Harrington's recent outings, sometimes you just want the the combination of that literary equivalent of zoning out in front of the TV, combined with finding out what happens next.

You're right that speed reading very well done stuff is a waste of time, but for the written equivalent of fast food, it seems to work fine. And if something does turn out to be better than expected, I can always slow down or go back and reread at my normal speed.

What is the point of speed reading a novel? If you can't be bothered to read what the author wrote, word for word (or nearly so) then you might as well go online and read a summary of the novel - job done. When an author writes a book, they consider every word they put in. Every word has meaning and a reason for being there. I am sure you could take almost any novel ever written and reduce it down to a 10th of it's original size and not lose any of its plot, but it would not be a good book to read.

Of course, it is your time and you can read or not read a book any way that pleases you, I just do not see the point in skimming it.

What if you want content that's half-way between the summary and what the author wrote? Certainly in the rare cases I read "airport novels" whose authors are masterful at pacing, intrigue and plot, but whose writing I don't particular enjoy (Grisham, for example), I'm just vegging out and don't want to absorb every last morsel.

I recently read Robin Hobb's liveship trilogy. I was often skipping/speed reading pages at a time to keep the story going at a pace that I enjoyed.

I enjoyed the story without having to 'endure', from my point of view, the boring exposition and over detailing and over explaining of plot points. The dialogue was good, the story interesting, but there were big chunks of text talking about character motivations or other inner monologue and scene painting that were very unnecessary and dull. Entirely skippable. From my point of view.

I've even done the same with my favourite author, Iain M Banks, who got a little wordy in his later novels (for example Matter, which was a bit of a slog compared to the sublime Excession, which I soaked up every word).

That's the point. Not every word in a book is created equal. Authors aren't infallible and also I'm very quick at picking up the gist of a plot point or argument, it's my 'superpower', I get a bit bored at the comprehension rate of most people that authors aim for.

Also I prefer story to detail, I think of it as the difference between people who listen to music for lyrics vs listening to the tune. Personally I don't understand lyric listeners, it's called music, not poetry. Each to their own.

>When an author writes a book, they consider every word they put in. Every word has meaning and a reason for being there.

I think that's true of authors writing poetry and some authors of novels such as Gustave Flaubert[1]. He spent years refining the same sentences over and over for a single novel.

However, a lot of authors' output has a lot of fluff and fat and the final novel's sentences are hardly more polished than a 1st draft "brain dump". A lot of thrillers and mysteries sold at airport bookstores could be characterized like this. However, it's fine because the plot was interesting and readers will forgive a lot of flabby sentences they had to slog through. Some authors really "craft" their sentences. Some authors don't.[2]

I think readers, as they read certain authors... implicitly perceive if... Each. Word. Is. Really. Important. ... and therefore, slow down to digest it as necessary.

E.g., I would read Flaubert slowly but read Charles Dickens quickly. It gets more complicated with non-English writers like Flaubert because there would be 2 layers of word choices happening: it's Flaubert's French word choices and then the English translator's choices.

Dickens, on the other hand, wrote to a schedule of installments. Even though he didn't literally get "paid by the word count", he did have to fill out a set number of pages each month and the quality of writing is uneven.

[1]Flaubert believed in, and pursued, the principle of finding "le mot juste" ("the right word"), --from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustave_Flaubert#Perfectionist...

[2]http://www.digitalspy.com/movies/50-shades-of-grey/feature/a...

80% of my reading is non-novel material, and speed reading comments and articles allows me to cover 5-10x more content per day. Need input...

> What is the point of speed reading a novel?

Well, if it's a recent Honor Harrington novel, to skip over all the stuff you already know is going on because it's been covered in pretty much exhaustive detail in the last four or five books too. David Weber is a man in desperate need of an editor.

Many novels are better for being speed read. Dan Brown and Stephen King for example, are very good at ideas and pacing but if you spend ages trying to savour their word choices you'll probably end up disappointed.

> Every word has meaning and a reason for being there.

That would be "Rent is due", for most professional writers. Or so they say.

When I was a kid, I used to speed read each Harry Potter book when it came out, just to find out the plot so nobody could spoil it for me, and then I'd read it again later for enjoyment

It's upsetting you're getting down-voted.

Every Neal Stephenson book I've read, I've gone through at break-neck pace wanting to know what happens, and later reread substantially more slowly to get make sure I follow as many of the ideas as possible.

Aren't you just spoiling it for yourself then?

Personally I retain information better if I read the CliffsNotes before the novel itself.

I'm not concerned with spoiling the plot, but rather giving myself a structure to be built out with details. [There's a term for this in learning theory that was mentioned in Pragmatic Thinking and Learning, but ironically it's slipping my mind right now.]

Related - Here's an example of how I took notes on the book REMOTE. https://github.com/tedmiston/notes/blob/master/books/Remote....

There are many ways to skin a wizard. (Who's to criticize how someone enjoys their leisure reading? I too spped-read the later honor Harrington books, for precisely the reasons noted above.)

I do it with academic papers,too - but because my goal is to index it and to identify quickly if I need to read it more carefully now, or just to know enough about it that I can remember it exists if I need it later. Of course, I don't pretend it's even speed reading - I literally skip most of the interior text.

Yea I suppose so. But I was always gonna re-read them, no matter the initial speed... I just didn't want someone else to spoil it I guess. I also find it easier to keep the plot in my head if I'm reading faster. If I read too slowly, I kind of forget what's happened. The experience is too similar to reality. Haha.

> I don't get why anybody would want to speed read a novel.

The bit about 'War and Peace' was a joke. Woody Allen didn't really speed read it :)

But even if it wasn't, War and Peace is a great example of a classic most people would be happy to speed read. It's not a relaxing novel like Harry Potter but it's perhaps arguably an important novel to read.

In today's society classic novels like that are often more about absorbing the knowledge rather than enjoying the story, which is people want to speed read... Fast knowledge absorption.

You obviously like Hemingway, you must realise for most people that's odd. Just like you think it's odd a small part of the population might speed read certain novels. It's great that not everyone is the same.

I would never want to "speed read" a novel, or anything else I was reading for enjoyment or enrichment. There are times, however, when I found "speed reading" for rapid content absorption not only desirable, but necessary. When I was in graduate school I would often be assigned voluminous amounts of text on a weekly basis, in several classes. Much of this assigned reading was not particularly interesting or enlightening, yet it composed of hundreds of pages per week in each class. It certainly isn't something you want do to all the time, but speed reading does have its place.

I have found that the density of content certainly adds to or detracts from the ability to read at a rapid pace.

When I sit down with a Raymond Carver short story, the shorter sentences and clear descriptions allow me to absorb it more quickly and move on.

I tried to read at the same pace with authors like Thomas Pynchon or David Foster Wallace (and Hemingway) and found myself re-reading the same paragraph four times.

For me, it isn't nessecarilly that I want to speed read a novel, it is just that I have trained my brain in other ways to absorb the most crucial aspects of a text/problem quickly and jump ahead (at my own detriment). Thanks college!

I don't get it, either. I read at a speed that matches what I'm trying to get out of it. I skim work-related documents and zone in on relevant areas. In college, I would speed read humanities textbooks.

But novels? Like you, I read those slowly and savor them like a good bourbon or wine. I look up words I don't know and commit them to memory. I stop and think about the writing, or a turn of phrase in some dialogue, or the world or characters. I consume novels. This is very different to how many people I know read.

But then I only read very good books. Life is too short to read a bad book.

So, for me, I read quickly and I read through books aggressively and without, as you say, savoring the experience: if it is a book with a strong character or event-based drive, I want to get at what happens to change them, or the events that drive the story, as fast as I can! But here's the thing--as you say, I do go back and read it. I'll read the same book three times, sometimes, and get more out of it each time. Once I know what the shape of the story is, I can more easily drill into it to appreciate the nuance. It's still faster than trying to read slowly to soak it all in the first time, and I think (can't prove, obviously) I get more out of it through the repetition than if I were to try to slow down and spend longer to do it only once.

YMMV, of course.

Everyone has their own preferences. Loads of books have some much fluff it's almost a crime against the reader. Personally, I speed read everything.

If you like the recount of the spanish war in "For whom the bell tolls", read "Homage to catalonia" by George Orwell. It's one of the best books I ever read.

It's really quite simple: some novels have writing you want to savor, and you read them slowly, and some novels you just want to extract the plot out of, from fairly mediocre writing.

For example, I really wasn't a huge fan of GRR Martin's writing or story, but I wanted to be on top of the plot of SoIaF, so I blazed through the thing. I got a few details wrong, such as someone being a cousin instead of an uncle maybe, but I was ready to discussed tons of specific aspects of the writing as well (like how he calls Brienne ugly ~every. single. time.~ she comes up).

I tried speed reading on a book I've read multiple tea that I enjoy. It doesn't last long - the world falls away and I read at the pace that felt natural as I enjoyed the book once again.

I agree that it's a bit daft speed reading good works but, if you enjoy reading fiction, you'll find it difficult - you just want to enjoy it.

For the same reason that some people enjoy a slow bar coffee (pour over style) and some want the fastest possible to move on with life.

Personally, I'd rather wait for the good things.

One counterexample is general news -- I always just want the tl;dr.

In a realistic world, each person has a relatively small discrete amount of free hours each week.

I speed read a few books from Hemingway to find out if I liked the author. Not my cup of tea.

How do you know if you'd like the author if you read the words carefully? Hemingway doesn't write for plot.

It only makes sense to speed read texts that don't have a lot of meaning in them. Which, of you consider avreage quality of technical books, articles and work stuff like email and memos, is the majority of texts you encounter.

Because people think more is better. I shortsighted and materialistic view of the world, that which has lead to much of our sufferings in this day and age.

>I don't get why anybody would want to speed read a novel.

Because most people don't understand that novels are for ideas, language and descriptions, as opposed to plot.

Except if we're talking about Grisham/Crichton/Dan Brown etc "novels".

> Except if we're talking about Grisham/Crichton/Dan Brown etc "novels".

Whilst these authors may not be literary greats (though not sure why you lump Crichton in with Brown), isn't it important that people are reading something, even if it is The Davinci Code or The Firm? Even if these are throwaway novels, readers are improving their comprehension, spelling and vocabulary skills (especially if these books are in english and english is not your first language). That's surely better than lazing in front the the telly watching reality TV shows.