The aftermath

Overall:

I like Roald Dahl and still really want to read more of him.

I’m starting The Skies of Pern tomorrow, or rather, continuing. I’m relieved to be reading at leisure again.

I’m surprised I haven’t already bought all of Berlinski’s other books. Reading the Short History has left me smitten and there are few crushes stronger than brain crushes.

I made a tiny little dent in my book list on goodreads. Which, if I read 80 pages per hour every hour of every day would take me over 3 years to get through.

The numbers, very approximate:
1456 pages
18.2 hours spent reading

470 words-per-minute
1.3 pages-per-minute
80 pages-per-hour

Which is far less than I’m used to. Either I’ve learned how to slow down and chew my books or I’m just getting slow. Quick! Someone get me a copy of Eye-Q!

Adjusting the time for things like getting up to get a snack or stretch my legs, which I generally forget to do while I’m reading anyway, it should take me about six or seven hours to read a four hundred page book. If I stay home for a week reading, allowing for getting through a low estimate of six-hundred pages a day, I should be able to read about ten books, of relatively high word count per page, in seven days.

Of course, none of this takes into account how much I like what I’m reading. When I “read” Moby Dick I pass out five times an hour and throw a tantrum, resulting in a words-per-minute average of about 17. If I like something I either race through it or take my time to enjoy it, as was the case with Infinite Ascent, whose numbers I had to guess at based on how quickly I was able to read a chapter over again. I also upped the average words per page to account for the relative difficulty of words such as “axiomatic” or “polynomial” as opposed to “water” or “sentences” in the Dahl books. In any case, extrapolating wildly gets me about 356 words per page (for these seven books), the text difficulty being about average.

I know that there’s no real way I can accurately predict how long it would take me to read a novel, it’s just subject to too many variables. But it’s fun trying, anyway. If I set myself the task, and focus on just reading it instead of kicking my little feet and allowing myself to be distracted, I should be able to read Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward, Angel in about nine hours. So, we’ll see. I’m going to take a little break and then give it a shot.



But right now, it's bunny time:

Come on Professor Charles Xavier, lets go eat some dark green leafy vegetables and talk about Omega Red (I hate that guy).