How Quickly Do You Read?

[CleverNickName]

I'm collecting info for a summer reading project, and I'm curious: How many days would it take you to read a 500-page novel, on average? Suppose you picked up a novel right now, at this very moment: with your current schedule and commitments as they are, how many days would you expect to need to finish it?

For me, it would take me about a week to read a 500-page book. Of course it will vary by the amount of free time I have that week, and how engrossing the writing is, and my general mood, but that's about the average. And it's the average that I'm looking for. How about you?

 

[Morrus]

Once upon a time a couple of days. Nowadays a couple of years…. It’s just finding the time!

 

[payn]

I went with 4-5 days as an average. Depending on the necessity of the read, such as for work, or the perceived enjoyment that average could go up or down.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Typically between 3 and 4 days. My wpm is 1000, it's just taking time to read it and absorb it that slows me down a bit.

 

[Jaegermonstrous]

I'm an outlier at a couple weeks, but I also work two jobs.

 

[embee]

At least a month, if not a year.

I have a day job, a marriage, two small children, and existing friend and family commitments.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I read a lot, and I read very quickly. But I’ve never kept track of those two facts in relation to each other, in part because I don’t necessarily read my books uninterrupted.

 

[TwoSix]

Tough to say. Depending on the size of the book, spacing, font, amount of dialogue (dialogue-heavy books tend to have less words per page), a 500 page book probably has a word count between 150K and a little over 200K. (Most of the books I get are e-books nowadays, so I tend to notice page count less and word count more.)

I generally average a little under 35K words per hour, so a 500 page book would probably be in the 5-6 hour range. So generally a day if work is fairly slow.

The last big book I read was Sanderson's Rhythm of War, which was 460K words, a little over 1,200 pages, and took me about 13 hours over 3 days.

 

[Blue]

For fiction, I read 60-100 pages an hour, depending on how "crunchy" it is. Technical manuals I read a bit slower, say 30-45 pages an hour with a high retention rate, or even slower if I'm taking notes and/or annotating. Other falls somewhere between - a naval battle history isn't as fast as light fiction, but I don't care about retaining a lot of details ("what date was X") so it's faster than technical.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I can't read.

I do fake it very well, though.