Discussion Forum—A Way with Words, a fun radio show and podcast about language

A book reviewer for the Los Angeles Times claims to have read a total of 462 -- count 'em -- 462 books last year.

>>>>I studied voice and piano fairly seriously during my elementary and high school days, and as such, I became very attuned to rhythm and cadence and voice. So what happens when I read is that I can "hear" the narrative and dialogue in my head, but what's odd is that I'm both aware of the book at, say, an LP rate (33 1/3 revolutions per minute) but in my head it translates to roughly a 78.

I've tried to slow this down, but realized that my natural reading rhythm is freakishly fast when an author friend asked me to go through the manuscript of her soon-to-be-published book for continuity errors. I sat in the La-Z-Boy at my parents' house with a pencil, went through page by page making notes but also enjoying the book, and had the whole task done in about 3-4 hours. This was a 350-page manuscript too, so roughly 80,000 words. Take away the pencil and the editor's hat and the reading speed would probably be close to 90 minutes.<<<<

I was skeptical, but then surprised by how many of the commenters say they read the same way. Still, check out this Slate piece about maximum possible reading speeds.

What about the rest of you? I'll be the first to confess that I'm a fairly slow reader, although I do usually remember where on a page a particular piece of information is located, even if I can't remember the exact piece of information.