Comment from Tumble Design

If for whatever reason my Comment from Tumble Design isn't posted, here it is:

"I had a similar conversation with my Dad in my teen years and he forced me to read books on school breaks and write mini-book reports for them. He thought I should be able to read 40 pages a day without a problem, because he could read a page in a minute or less. To him the assignment would only take me 40 min. to an hour max. every day. Was that tasking too much?

But what he didn't realize, and why I couldn't keep up with the reading, was that I read three times slower than he did, which meant that he wasn't asking for an hour out of my day, but three hours. The whole process was frustrated me to no end due to my poor reading skills. I wanted to read, and I had a well developed vocabulary, but when it came to reading silently, I didn't have the skills.

When I became a Junior in high school, I went with this girl for a little while and towards the end of our relationship, I realized that all we ever talked about was gossip and hearsay and superficial pop culture tidbits, but there was never any form of an intellectual conversation between us. I wanted to talk about things that were bigger than our lives, and do things about them, whatever they might be. I wanted to be part of a larger conversation, something I knew I could get from books, but there was still that barrier for me to get over.

After we broke up, I decided I was going to force myself to read. No matter, how hard or difficult it would be, everyday I would read a little bit. It got to the point where I always carried a paperback in my back pocket so that I could read whenever I had a spare moment. And reading became easier, the more I read.

But what really made me a lifelong reader, was learning techniques to increase my reading speed and making reading a more active activity for me. It's because of those exercises that now, not only can I read the books I want to, but I can also read a lot more of them in the same amount of time. I put together my research and exercises into a book, you can read and download for free, for those that are interested.

Otherwise, awesome article Nicky! Keep up the good stuff! "