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oLahav said:

Some people read on the subway or the bus. Some read at home, before they go to bed. Some people read at mealtimes, and some read whenever they can.
Some people read at their library and others sneak into a Chapters bookstore to read a book without buying it (shocking! but it’s true).
Some people are fast readers, others are slow.
Some people take a peek at the end of the book before finishing it, others can’t.
Some people memorize the page they were on, others fold it (I hate those people!), some use a bookmark.
Some people have to finish their books, others can stop if it gets too boring.
And some people don’t read at all…

Which one of these are you? Got any secret reading style tips?

lala said:

I read on the weekends. In a comfy chair. I read until I finish the book, I haven’t come across anything that is too, terribly, boring except love stories and sentimental crap. And yes, I am a folder. Bookmarks always fall out and I already have too much to remember. I also underline passages I like. I think I am a fast reader, but I know of some people who finished HP in a day.It took me three days. I live in a rural area where the bus service stops at 6pm and there is no subway or train -so no time there. I have a weird habit with magazines and textbooks-I read from the back to the front of the article or chapter. It’s tedious to always start at the beginning. But I don’t read the end of novels until I finish the book.

oLahav said:

I read whenever I get the chance, before I go to sleep, at mealtimes, weekends, whenever.
Sadly, I can’t read on moving platforms (subway, bus, planes, whatever), it makes me sick.
Bookmarks for me, thanks, folding ruins the book.
I read fast- HP in a day! Bought it at midnight and everything… that was a fun day.
I have a weird compulsion- I always have to read the very last line of the book when I start it. I just need the last line (which usually doesn’t reveal any information about the ending anyway), then I can read the book from the beginning. And I can stop if I really hate the book, I can’t remember a specific incident when it happened lately though.
I never read books at a book store, that’s pretty much stealing. I own tons of books, and I may take out a library book once in a while.

Lala- how do you read backwards? Paragraph by paragraph? I do it sometimes with newspapers and such, usually a phrase grabs me in the middle of the article and I move to the next paragraph, then the ones before if there’s a reference to something up there, etc. I end up not getting the point of the article most often though, I find it confusing.

acrosstheuniverse said:

I read on the subway. It makes the commute seem a lot faster. However what usually happens (depending on the book) is that I’ll read for a bit, then doze for a bit, then read again. I can’t read in the car though, I think it’s because of the moving scenery, whereas in subways, for the most part you can’t see a lot out the windows.

Right now I’m reading a book that I had to read last year for a Love and its Myths class. Needless to say, I skimmed it and got the concepts, but I want to read it again and really enjoy it at a slower pace. It’s called Geek Love by Katherine Dunn and I’ve heard rumours that Johnny Deep is interested in making a movie out of it. It’s a fantastic read, very full of detail and imagery, which I love.

Sorry Oren…but I’m an infamous dog-earer too like Lala. I always lose my bookmarks some how!

oLahav said:

Another thing- what type of books do you like reading most?
I just can’t answer my own question. Crime novels, fantasy, sci-fi, even a romance is ok once in a while. It depends on my mood, really.

Do you guys (or girls for now) like reading a certain type of books or just whatever as long as it’s good?

serjo said:

I love reading but if a book doesn’t please me enough I abandon it imediately…All spare time that I have you’ll encounter me with a book in hands, or a magazine, or anything readable.I think that there are too many books to be read to spend your time with a book that isn’t good enough!

lala said:

I was part of a book club with other women, they were professors and such. They only wanted to read women authors. I didn’t find anything we read very compelling-so I quit and now I read what sounds interesting or sometimes I hear an author on Cspan books and I order it off of Amazon. Right now I am reading Louis Gates Jr.’s Colored People. It was my hubby’s book that he read for an English class 10 years ago when he was a Litrature major. I read the title on the shelf every day but the other day I finally decided to read it. I will read it this weekend. I prefer mysteries to be honest. I read scifi in High School. I also love to read children’s picture books. I have a collection of poems for children and also fairy tales or children’s stories from other cultures that I like to read over and over again. About the backwards reading-I start with the last page and read a paragraph at a time moving towards the beginning of the article. I have a lot more questions about the article and am more interested in reading it to find out what the hell they are talking about. This is when I am completely bored and need to entertain myself. Now its a habit. Yes, I’m weird!

kaitomono said:

I am a voracious reader and read everywhere! Even in the car – I listen to talking books! I always have a pocket book in my purse and almost look forward to delays on the highway so I can take out my book and read.

When I’m home I have different types of books in various places, I keep my recent fiction thriller or mystery near me when I watch TV and read while the commercials are on. My self-help or philosophical or spiritual type books are next to my bed for before bed reading…unless that mystery is getting good and I take it to bed with me and read for awhile.

I too read magazines from back to front usually.

I actually get anxious if I am out somewhere and I have forgotten to take a book along. Especially when I go to a medical or dental appointment, they have such lousy reading material there.

oLahav said in response to:

Lousy and outdated, it’s true. But I’m usually too nervous to read anything.

I take it you read several books all at once if you have different books in different places… how do you manage to do that? Don’t you mix things up?

I can only read one book at a time… and I still get mixed up sometimes.

kaitomono said:

I have several books on the go at once. I remember when my children were small and they came home from school, I’d be reading a book while cooking (a very late) supper and would get this : “Oh no mom’s been to the library again!”

I focus on whatever book I am reading at the time and they are all different genres or topics so I don’t get mixed up. As I mainly read non-fiction it is easy to keep it all straight. :)

Queen Moumita said:

I read in a gentle, soft place..where the calm position.. is situated. I read some of gently, softly with full of concentration

hcraig said:

I’m a reading addict. One I start a book, I have trouble stopping. For example, last night I stayed an extra half hour in the laundromat so I could finish up the string of chapters i was reading.

The worst is when I read ‘one chapter’ before I go to bed. Next thing I know, it’s 2am, I’m so sleepy I can barely keep my eyes open or concentrate on the page…but I still don’t stop. I end up rereading everything the next day anyways since i read it while I was half asleep.

oLahav said in response to:

I can relate to that, I always have to keep reading until the end of the chapter. That’s why I like mystery or crime novels where the chapters are really short, so it’s easy to stop whenever you want to.

sailajabogavelli said:

Reading for me is a passion I developed from a very young age. I read everything i could from mystery, crime, comics, romance, sci-fic to children’s books, even textbooks sometimes and forget to eat, sleep and work. I prefer to sit undisturbed & certainly cannot read on anything in motion. It is a definite no to me to read morethan one book at a time, I really get mixed up with all the stuff. I can live in a forest with books by my side.

hcraig said:

Not my reading style..but I once lived with a girl who liked reading murder mysters, crime books and loved reading about serial killers. But she liked to do it at night, in a dark room, with all the lights turned off but her reading lamp. To top things off, we where sharing a residence apartment for the summer and were the only 2 living in a building that usually housed 90 rowdy students – so it was errily quiet most of the time.

Now Susan and I worked opposite sechdules, so we didn’t often see eachother, but one night I came home around 3am, and was trying to open my appartment door with my parents home key. When I finially realized what I was doing and switched to the right key, I opened the door just in time to see Sue in the kitchen, tears down her face grabbing a knife because she thought i was a killer trying to break into the apartment! Would have been more scary for me, but she had only grabbed a butter knife, so it was just funny.

I’m all for a cosy atmosphere while you read.. but I always thought she was a little over the top!

oLahav said:

That’s a great story Heather.

I personally don’t take the time to build any atmosphere when I read. I can get my concentration up to good levels really fast, so once I start I’m so “into” my book I can’t notice anything around me anyway.

TANIYA said:

i love reading books and i love it even more when it interests me….if the book is not what i want to read or i don’t like it, then i just read that part which i want to read. i mean, a glance over each page and see what is worth reading instead of leaving it in middle. i need my bed or the chair to read, both should be comfy. i read only after fixing my time and the number of pages to be fixed each day and i make it like a task for me…......

albrecht said:

I’ve recently taken to reading on the subway train on the way to and from work. I was surprised at the amount of extra reading I’m able to get in while standing in a moving train packed with people and shaking about for less than a 30 minute trip. Not really one of those ideal atmospheres but it works so far!

I also try and get in a chapter or two before going to bed….it gets me in a good relaxed state to fall asleep much quicker.

oLahav said in response to:

Ever since I started reading this Stephan King book before I go to bed I’ve been getting freaky dreams… I don’t think I’ll be reading much more of his stuff.

I’m always so jealous of the guys like you who can read on the subway. I can’t, it makes me disoriented for some reason… I just have to stick to music on the subway. And my usual activity- nervously watching everyone to see who coughs or sneezes so that I can hold my breathe and turn my head the other way.

acrosstheuniverse said:

The subway is a great atmosphere for reading if you can handle it. It’s such a strange situation, and I think one of the only ones in the world where so many people are in such close courters and strive not to communicate with each other. But, I digress.

@ Albrecht, it really is amazing how much reading you can accumulate over little stints here and there. Plus, at least for me, it makes a commute seem a lot faster!

I’m actually going to check out the neighbourhood library tonight, so I’ll come back with what I think about my reading style in an actual library!

lala said:

I tried to read Steven King’s Insomnia before going to bed one night. I was so anxious I couldn’t go to sleep. I never started another King novel. However, I have liked his short stories published in the yearly, O’Henry anthologies.

I usually have different books going at one time also. I read professional books, children’s books, biographies, poetry, murder mysteries (I finally got a used copy of Agatha Christie’s Murder of Roger Akroyd) and I’m still tackling the old canon. I used to feel guilty about reading. It seemed like such a luxury to just sit down and read.

oLahav said in response to:

How can you possibly feel guilty about reading? It’s one of the most natural processes of the human mind for entertainment, we’ve done it for years! Reading is great. Although I may be biased, my mother is a librarian…

I agree with the Stephan King point… but it’s hard to stop once you start. It gets pretty addictive. Also, let me know whether you guessed who was the murderer is in Roger Akroyd, it blew my mind away.

hcraig said:

Oren and Lala: I can completely understand how guilt that can go along with reading for pleasure. Sometimes it seems like there is just always so much to do in life you’re wasting time, or being unproductive.

My father and I used to argue about this all the time when I was younger. I wanted to read sweet valley twin books, he wanted me to read Wuthering Heights. We struck a deal that for every ‘good’ book I read I could read 4 fun books.

renjiv said:

i read only when i am interested. it can be in my house, college or in bus. before start reading i used to set targets(like – to read 100 pages before going to bed).i love to read sitting in my easychair.

lucyinthesky said:

I will admit to reading entire books at Chapters…! I usually read when I’m in bed, whether I’m about to go to sleep or not, it’s just a relaxing place to read and concentrate on the words. I can’t read on subways because all the people and noises are too distracting. When I was younger, I used to pretend to go to sleep but read by the side of my bed using my nightlight. Probably not good for the eyes!

chandra_avinash said:

I have this really annoying habbit – I tend to flip thru’ pages to the end of books sometime. And when I am too lazy to do that, I tend to read the plot summary on Wiki. I have ruined atleast a few series of books this way – for instance – Song of Ice and Fire (Georgre R. R. Martin), Prince of Nothing (R. Scot Bakker), etc.

Usually, I tend to read, till I fall asleep.

chandra_avinash said:

And another thing that I do is to buy books in bulk and then read a couple of them simultanesouly.

Anyone else who indulges in such meaningless self torture?

Cheers!

oLahav said:

I know some people who always flip to the end. I’m sometimes tempted to do that, so what I do is just read the very last line (which is most often meaningless) and it helps. I read the wikipedia summaries after I’m done usually, I don’t know why, just for closure I guess. But I do read it ahead of time for movies I don’t really want to watch or TV programs I don’t have time to watch. Wikipedia rules.

acrosstheuniverse said in response to:

I definitely do the same. I find I always start reading in a sitting position, then it becomes lying on my side and then like two seconds later I’m out like a light. If I want to actually stay up and read I have to avoid my bed!

albrecht said in response to:

Nice, I also have to admit to having read an entire book in the Chapters store. A started reading it for a few hours one time and suddenly it was almost half way through so by that time I didn’t really feel like paying for only half a book. A few hours at a time over a few more visits and it was done. I don’t really know if I should feel guilty about it or not…I think Chapters will survive :)

chandra_avinash said:

I do the same at a store called Landmark. Infact the are among those stores that advertise themselves as places where you can sit, try out a book and then buy it.

I haven’t read a whole book there as yet – I find it too noisy with all the kids around and people fooling with jukeboxes and the like :|