A Real Pageturner.

In the time it takes for me to type out the sentence that describes to you what she does, she’s already done it again. She’s flipped the page. And then again. And again.
I call her The Speed-Reading Chick, and she’s in high gear today, sitting just over yonder, here at the mega-bookstore. She is the only person I know of who frequents this place as much as I do, especially on weekends. She is a fixture, as am I.
And there she is, curled up on one of the comfy chairs, while I am here at this desk sort of table-affair. An attractive girl, I’m guessing she is in her latter twenties. She looks very Sheryl Crow-like, and to me, Sheryl Crow (whom I have met in real life) is very attractive. I’ve never spoken to The Speed-Reading Chick, but have observed her ominous powers here for perhaps a year or so now, while I myself have plodded through the books that I read.
Today, it is Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace I am peering over from time to time, to catch a glimpse of Attractive-Speed-Reading-In-Progress!

The Speed-Reading Chick never has less than three or four books in front of her. [From now on I am going to call her Sheryl]. Always novels, and always those kind of novels that could be described as.... hmmm... I want to be in no way negative sounding here, because I do not mean it that way at all... but, the kind of Books That Women Are Supposed To Read. For an even greater reason [to not sound negative] I will not name any authors that fall into this category. (Incidentally, someone could say the same about what I am reading today. Let’s be serious. How many men really read Atwood?)
Anyhoo, I think you know what I mean. Sheryl’s books always have alluring pastel pink and/or blue covers and are written by authors who seem to be giving birth to at least two of these items a month. And no, not Harlequin romances. Good fair-size, relatively substantial books.
But she EATS them, I swear it.
I have watched her read several books in a sitting. Time and time again. For a long time now.
She is not just flipping through the thing either, not scanning or skimming. I can see her move down the page, but at such a steady unrelenting pace that it is quite mesmerizing, if not unnerving. And then (this astounds me)... when she finishes one, without so much as blinking or re-arranging her pretty self in the chair, she reaches for the next book, flips it open, and is off.
To new worlds, new faces, new predicaments.

Far be it from me to be critical of Sheryl. But let’s talk about comprehension.
If she can actually comprehend what she is reading at light speed there, then I say this is quite a gift, it really is. And it is a better gift than its far-too-common opposite, the gift of nodding off to sleep if you read two sentences in succession! At the same time, I do not think the gift of speed-reading is a gift I would wish upon myself, plodder that I am. I like to savor what I read.... mmm.... “mull over it” yes, that is the thing I like to do. Turn it over in the mind. Re-read paragraphs, marvel over the construction. Glory in the authorial uniqueness.
But this reading of three or four books in a sitting BING BANG BOOM....
I don’t care how carnivorous a person is, isn’t there a point when eating six sirloin steaks in a row becomes unappetizing?
Having said this though, I am reminded of the story of the reputed Fastest Reader In The World, Mr. Howard Stephen Berg.
When Berg appeared on Live With Regis and Kathie Lee years ago, the hosts gave him twenty minutes to read a 240-page book. They then brought out a surprise guest: the author, who quizzed Berg on what he’d just read.
Berg scored 100. Answered every single question correctly.
He is Guinness-certified (as am I, however, my Guinness-certification has to do with beer consumption).... Guinness-certified in 1989 as the world’s fastest reader (the category has since dropped from the book). Berg can read eighty pages per minute. He doesn’t read constantly, and he doesn’t always speed read. “But when I want to learn about something,” he says, “I learn it really quickly and really well.”
So, granted, this guy’s obviously got a good connection going.... snappy synapses.
Still, I read of Harriet Klausner of Morrow, Georgia (amazon.com’s #1 book reviewer) who claims that she reads twenty books a week. Or even prolific author Nicholas Sparks, who, while writing six bestselling novels in six years, claims to also READ about 125 books every year.
Among other things, it is simply remarkable.
Beyond the issue of comprehension, such rampant reading seems to me a bit indiscriminate. Or at least it contains an element of the danger of possibly becoming an indiscriminate reader. To me, opening a new book fouteeen seconds after finishing the last one is like boarding an endless succession of buses with no regard for where any of them are going. In the throes of their voraciousness, how do these people arrive anywhere distinct? How do they assimilate what they read?
Well, how much do you read Cipriano?
So far this year I have read sixteen books. A few I have not finished (which is always the case, every year), but sixteen I have meticulously devoured. Last year (2004) I read fourty-four books. In 2003, I read forty. And in 2002, forty. I have kept full bibliographic records of my reading since about 1990.
Steadily, I am averaging about forty books a year.

CROW UPDATE:
Well, by golly, Sheryl has left the building. I know that she will be back later.
But as she passed by my table, (which is really an empty space at a bank of computer terminals) she set down the three books which she has just read in their entirety. By the way, this is what a lot of people, including myself, do here... we read an entire book (or three) without buying them. Instead of re-shelving them, she left these three here, so I leaned over and picked them up after she had gone. All of them have very enticing covers to them! They are The Demon’s Daughter by Emma Holly (322 pages), Whirlwind Affair by Jacquie D’Alessandro (339 pages), and Little White Lies by Gemma Townley (320 pages).
That’s 981 pages.
She’s a real pageturner.

I think it was two weekends ago. I left this same bookstore and set out onto the street, realizing just then that my paper coffee cup was empty. There were three of those plasic recycle bins right up against the store, ready for collection. So I opened the lid of one, to throw my cup in there. To my initial delight, the bin was filled to the top... with books! NEW books, with the covers torn off of them, the store having purged their shelves of overstocked items or non-sellers or whatnot else. With no regard for my appearance as a homeless street-person, I now went from bin to bin. They were all full of books! Sweet Lord, what a bounty!
However, as I picked each of them up, I found none of them to be books that I myself would have read. Not a one!
Yet, they were very much the type of book that Sheryl is into. Bins... full of her very genre! And she was IN the store at the time! I had seen her there, up in her comfy chair, just earlier on. I felt like going back into the store and sharing my discovery with her....
“Hey Sheryl, come out here. In these three bins is enough good reading for like.... an entire... DAY!”
But instead, I just walked away. After all, how would she be able to tell if the books were any good when their covers have so obviously been removed?