Over the past few weeks I’ve noticed a few videos talking about how weird it is to read every word in a book. Why would you skim a book you’ve never read before? That seems so strange. They said it was to save time but I think you’d just miss the nuances of the dialogue or setting if you don’t read everything???? If you do this why do you like it?
by the_gamemasters_fool
11 Comments
I admit I am bad about this, usually in long passages that are describing how a room is decorated.
I used to skim, but at some point I started making an effort to read every word.
“why do you like it?”
“They said it was to save time”
You have the answer but you’re still here asking what the answer is?
Depends on the book. In Stephen King’s The Shining (just finished it), I read every word because I was so enthralled. However”The Housemaid” was the boom I read before that and I skimmed stuff because the writing wasn’t as good.
Some books have passages that i am not interested in. I care about stuff happening. I don’t care about what the room looks like. So if a long description starts, i skim over it until stuff starts happening again.
A lot of books have a lot of basically pointless description of boring and ultimately completely nonconsequential stuff.
I read every word. Otherwise, I’d think I didn’t read the book.
People go online and post insane videos on the internet for attention or because they are stupid.
I’m sure some people don’t read every word and skim for a number of reasons, but usually people reading for the story or to enjoy the prose will not be doing that. People saying it’s “weird” to read every word are either very confused as to how fluent reading works, or trying to justify their own crappy attention span.
Sometimes the plot is better than the writing
I’ve just read “Jurassic Parc” and admit that I’ve skimmed through many (if not most) of Ian Malcolms’s “rants”. They were far too long and brought far too little to the story, and since I’m quite a slow reader and read before the bed, they were just tiring.
They answered your question, Its to save time. its not really a big deal
I skim a lot, but not by choice usually. I just get excited about what will happen next and my eyes start skipping ahead and I skip descriptive passages or action scenes. I can’t stop it. It doesn’t help that school rewarded being a good skimmer. Part of why I like audiobooks is that it forces me to read every word.