Reality of Reading

I often choose not to read stuff that I know is bad.  Usually, that means not reading Robert Kaplan.  In this case, I am not hot to read the Trump interviews with the WashPo or NYT.  Why?  Because I don't need to read the incredibly dumb and shallow. Twitter is good enough for giving me the highlights.

Why not?  Because I have heaps to read, so why waste time on stuff that is wrong or uninformative?

I have realized that I have four reading speeds:

• Fiction.  I can read a good piece of fiction very quickly.  Only the length of a Lee Child book slows me down at all.  I could finish a Robert B. Parker book in a day.  Sob.
• Internet.  I can and do read heaps of blog posts and articles quickly as I bop around the internet.  Not as fast as reading fiction but not slow either.
• History. I can read historical stuff pretty quickly as long as it is well written.
• Academic stuff.  I was never fast, but now I am pretty slow reading journal articles and books that are aimed at the academic audience.  I need to work on this, as I am woefully behind.
• Grading.  It is amazing how slow I read when I grade.  Not great.  Oh, and reviewing fits in here as well.

Of course, the correlation is this: that which takes discipline and focus is harder.  Who would have thunk it?