Disclaimer: I’m experimenting with new writing styles, please forgive any arrogance. Welcome to another chaotic rant!

Recently, I’ve noticed a growing obsession in speed reading. In many ways, this is fantastic – it suggests that there’s a growing desire to read more books which is wonderful. The transformative power of a book cannot be understated and I hope that readers worldwide can find literature that resonates with the core of their existence.

Despite this seemingly healthy trend in speed reading, there are concerns on my end about the consequences of it. Ideas that might seem far-fetched but worry me. So please indulge me while I rant about two dangers speed reading presents.

1. Comprehension

The obvious danger of increasing your reading speed by 300% is comprehension.

Being able to read a page in five seconds is great, but how much of it are you really getting out of it? There’s a big difference between reading a page and reading a page. You can let words fly past your visual field but I would argue you haven’t really read a book unless you’ve wrestled with it and given it the chance to shape you.

It can be very easy to get obsessed with ticking off a book as ‘read’ and forgetting why one reads in the first place. Imagine someone who drives around all the American states within a week (yes, it’s possible). You can quite legitimately claim that you’ve travelled across the U.S., but have you really visited America if you only spent a few minutes in each state? That’s like saying you’ve visited Abu Dhabi if you only went for a stopover flight. Qué va! Surely it takes a certain level of exploration, interacting with locals and visiting unique monuments to unlock that ‘visited’ badge. Simply being within the borders isn’t enough.

There’s a certain quietness, a certain chewing upon literature which is where the magic begins. To reread a beautiful passage, to immerse yourself in a new universe and to make battle with the writer’s point of view. These things take time and can’t be rushed.

“But Eric!” one might cry. “There’s a process involved in speed reading. A series of adaptions. With the use of tactics such as a visual aid and non-verbalisation, the idea is one gradually reads faster whilst maintaining comprehension. What you’re proposing is a slippery slope fallacy!” And I would completely agree. If everyone can have transformative experiences with as many books as possible, I will spur them on. But there’s a fine line between reading fast and slow and to cross that line takes away a certain reverence of reading that’s unique to literature. To me, that is one of the most unfortunate lines one can cross.

2. Motivations

I’m partially guilty of this, but I’m wary of people who flex that they’ve read ‘100 books a year’ or something like that. Okay, good on you. But what did you get out of them? How did the books shape you? That’s what I’m curious about. Which books made you laugh? Cry? Love? Which books kept you up at night in delirious daze? Which books profoundly stripped you of a worldview and gently gave you another? To simply aim to read many books for the sake of telling people you’re a reader seems pointless.

It’s like the idea of body counts. Why do people boast about the number of sexual partners they’ve had? What did you get out of it? Love? Companionship? A future partner? Or do you sleep others just to tell people that you’ve “conquered” them, like a game? What a bizarre and catastrophic game! Maybe I’m naïve and old-fashioned, but I’ve never seen the point in flexing numbers like these. It seems much more valuable to invest in each relationship as much as possible, to unlock sacred experiences like love and companionship that come only with patience and time.

Similarly, it only makes sense to me to have ‘read’ a book if you took the time to get something out of it. You can say, “Oh yes, I read The Little Prince in five minutes. It’s got drawings.” Okay, but how did you feel when the prince tamed the fox? When he fell in love with his rose? When he realised his rose looked just like all the roses on Earth, or the more beautiful realisation that only his rose was his, after all? Assuming you are literate, if these questions leave you at a loss for words, I wonder why you even choose to finish a book at all.

I’m writing this mostly as a reminder to myself, rather than to criticise. It’s easy to forget why I write two articles a week or read a book a week. The pressure to maintain these standards is immense. But that’s not why I started. Here’s to slowing down and reconnecting with the roots of our passions. To the quiet pursuit of an adventure, not because anyone expects us to, but because we want to. And to take as long as it takes to get there.