When I was seven, I tried to learn to read two books simultaneously. I was lying on my stomach on the living room floor, reading Alice in Wonderland, when it struck me how much more fun it would be if I could read faster. I figured I could just read one book with each eye. I jumped up and got a second book and started to experiment.
One on the left, one on the right. That’s how it’s done, right? Wrong. Dang. One above the other? Hmm, no, either they’re too big or I’m too little. What if I... overlap them? This felt crazy and very sophisticated. I set the right-hand side of Alice on top of the left-hand side of the other book. I could then read a line and jump over the edge of the page onto the other book’s page. This actually worked, except that the sentences ran together. Unexpected complication! My best idea was to interleave the pages and hold them up to the light so that I could see the text of the second book between the lines of text of the first book. Like a scrim, or a palimpsest. Unfortunately this also resulted in merged storylines and some mirror-image text. At that point, I realized that this was probably just too hard for little kids. I resolved to try again when I was bigger. After all, I was only just learning how to read chapter books. Naturally, some naysayer or other in my family looked over to see what I was doing and explained that it wasn’t possible. Scoff! Scoff! Maybe for you! Tell me that something won’t work, that it’s unrealistic or dumb or technologically unfeasible or that it violates the laws of physics. Go ahead, try it. It won’t get you far. I’m not even annoyed by that sort of thinking, much less discouraged. I was stone-cold certain that I would have more fun if I could read faster, I knew there was a way, and I was NOT WRONG. I read pretty darn fast. One year, 2009, I read 500 books just to see if I could. That was before I learned how to listen to audiobooks on 2x. Let me briefly outline the ways I reliably read faster, and then let me tell you about my white whale, my obsessive search.
There are a lot of valid criticisms of speed-reading. Fine. Great. I will never be satisfied with the amount of content that I can mull over deeply and ponderously. I love reading the slow way as well. I read poetry, I read literary fiction, in high school I read Don Quixote in the tub until my bathwater was cold. I also happen to want to slurp up vast amounts of trivia. I want to stay current on a bunch of topics from multiple sources. I want to read my second tier and skim my third tier while still immersing myself in my first. Why choose? I like a certain amount of true crime, thrillers, best-sellers, popular psychology, memoirs, business books, and other pop culture ephemera. I like following current events while still having time for lengthy investigative pieces. I want to keep up on the transitory while setting aside time for the evergreen. Hence, my obsessive quest for a way to speed-read library ebooks. The white whale! I have tried EVERYTHING. It’s maddening. I believe that it constitutes fair use for me to read a library book in whatever format I please. As long as I’m not hacking anything, using it for personal profit, or keeping it past the due date, why does it matter what font or format I use? I can read upside down at a fairly brisk pace, and that doesn’t seem to bother the public library when I bring home a physical copy of a book. Why can’t I read an ebook in a speed-reading app? Why do I want this feature? I want to be able to whip through a book hands-free. In fact, it doesn’t even have to be fast; I’d like to be able to read while I eat or work out and not have to touch the screen. Or the, book, I guess you would call it. That wood thing. There are two methods that would satisfy me. 1. Auto-scroll, like the text at the beginning of the Star Wars movie. I used to have a PDA app that did this. Why was it possible 20 years ago, but not now? Kindle doesn’t have scrolling, iBooks has scroll format but no auto-scroll, Adobe Digital Editions doesn’t scroll, OverDrive doesn’t scroll... Y U NO SCROLL?!? 2. Spritz. This is the gold standard speed-reading format. It highlights a couple of words at a time, and you can keep your eyes stationary while the text moves rapidly off to the left. There is also no reason why Spritz couldn’t be an option in OverDrive, Kindle, iBooks, etc. It just isn’t. Bah! Okay, so it isn’t built in. Surely there’s a way that I could simply read my library ebooks in an alternate app within the 21-day limit? I tried several elaborate methods of transferring an ebook file into a speed-reading app. Using my laptop, download the file into Adobe Digital Editions, transfer it into Dropbox, and then try to open it in Gerty, in Outread, in anything I could find. That’s a no-can-do’er. Open the book in OverDrive Read and try to use various speed-reading browser extensions. Nope. They don’t work because a book in OverDrive Read is really an image, not text. The only thing that does seem to work is that I can get my iPad accessibility text-to-speech to speed-read a book to me in OverDrive Read. I just haven’t figured out how to get it to start from any point other than the beginning. Apparently a lot of people strip the DRM from their library ebooks. I don’t want to mess around with that, partly because it would mean futzing around with each book, and partly because I believe piracy exposes me to undesirable things like viruses and worms. Besides, what I’m trying to do shouldn’t BE piracy. I don’t want to keep these books; I just want to speed-read them. I would in fact be returning them more quickly! One day, every single book ever published will be available digitally, to read in any way we please. That day is not yet here. Right now, not even all the digital books are available on audio. I mean, I ask of you. Am I honestly to be expected to track down paper copies of things that I want to read? What am I supposed to do with them after I’m done? Stack them in my house? Perhaps one day in the distant future, you’ll find me lying on the floor of my living room, wearing a cranial electrotherapy stimulation helmet, happily buzzing through two books at one time. Until then, I guess I’ll take what I can get. Comments are closed.
|
AuthorI've been working with chronic disorganization, squalor, and hoarding for over 20 years. I'm also a marathon runner who was diagnosed with fibromyalgia and thyroid disease 17 years ago. This website uses marketing and tracking technologies. Opting out of this will opt you out of all cookies, except for those needed to run the website. Note that some products may not work as well without tracking cookies. Opt Out of CookiesArchives
January 2022
Categories
All
|