when i was a kid, before smartphones were a thing, and when internet was mostly for reading, pictures, and music, and when youtube was very small and i somehow didn’t care about it at all, i could fill my time just reading harry potter. i don’t know how it was possible, but i could just focus and read a book. but i have never read a book in a single day, and didn’t even know back then it was a thing.
these days, i can’t focus much at all. sometimes i can keep reading for hours but then i get bored or distracted. i read one book all the way through two months ago and that alone was something that made me proud of myself.
but i just don’t understand how can someone read a book in a day. it just sounds like magic. i asked google how many books are there in the world. it said, over hundred million. i guess i could just give up on reading altogether then.
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I just finished a book called “The Anastasia Syndrome” by Mary Higgins Clark. VERY good book. People still read, it’s just not as common these days.
what’s the point of even grabbing a book if i just stop reading it after few hours and never open it again. i think i am completely broken somehow. it’s worthless, life, it’s all pointless to live like this.
i can’t even watch a movie all at once anymore. i just stop it within 20 minutes.
Same
Same here also. I get about 50 pages in, then put it away for later which never comes. Try short stories, especially the morbid kind (Poe, Lovecraft, etc) I can usually make it through one and feel like I accomplished something.
damn this site. whenever i put in the time to define my problem and describe it here, i quickly end up finding a solution to it. i wonder if it would be possible to do this without annoying people here. maybe i should write a journal or something.
When I was a teen, I read Silent Running in one day. It’s a sci-fi story. It just fascinated me, and I kept reading. Granted it wasn’t very long, but its the only time I’ve accomplished the feat.
Silent Running – fantastic movie. I didn’t know it was a book but I’ll have to check it out. The movie was directed by the guy who did the SFX for 2001 A Space Odyssey on a scrappy budget of $1 Million (2001 had a budget of 12 Mil). He rented an aircraft carrier and shot everything in 1 month. Great minimalist scifi for people who don’t require ray guns and blue aliens.
I’ve read a few good books in a day. And if not in a day, a few hours a day. Which is still a lot I think. Especially if it’s a good book. It’s quite easy for me. But everyone is different.
I rarely read now though, but only because I feel like it’s a waste of time compared to practicing piano, or learning programing, or some other hobby. Not to mention finding a good book to begin with isnt always easy
it comes and goes, the desire to read. Sometimes you have to read when you don’t want to, but not usually. If you don’t enjoy it, then that’s okay, speaking as a real book lover.
Yet even with reading and the written word being the thing I love most in the world, not all books are worth it. I like horror quite a bit these days; House of Skin by Tim Curran is one of those pulp novels I can’t put down. It’s erotic, it’s sensual, it feels sordid and so wonderful just reading the book.
I can tell you about a book that I hate; The Good Earth. It’s such an unpleasant book even Star Trek made fun of it. There isn’t anyone likeable in it. The world is a genuinely unpleasant place to spend time. I had to read it for school, and that was the last time I tried to read it. I bought a collector’s edition copy just to have proof forever that some literature is just bad.
My favorite way to read a book is a bit at a time, every night while I’m trying to go to sleep. The focus required to read tires me out, and I sleep so well. Supposedly horror gives you nightmares, not me. I can read about a set of brutal murders and then sleep like the dead. It’s comforting, because my perception finally matches the morbid and grumpy outlook I have on the world these days.
I never have and can’t read a novel in a single day. I have read other flavors of book in a day (sometimes in an hour even). I don’t enjoy novels I do however love reading rulebooks (yes I know that’s lame) and poetry, these generally come in much thinner books and thus I can read them in a day quite easily.
The speed at which you read isn’t important though in my opinion. If you’re reading for entertainment the point is to kill time.
The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman , I remember that being one that I read from begining to end. To me it was a lot different than any other book that I’ve ever read, and it was a page turner. I wouldn’t be so hard on yourself about not reading it in one day if you don’t though, everyone has different oppinions in what is a good story. What’s a page turner to one person is a omg wtf is this crap to another.