I don't know if my pace is falling or if I've not devoted enough time to reading or what, but the days when I did a book or so a week are long since gone. I've been reading The Mote In God's Eye for about a week and a half and haven't even passed the 100-page mark. Yikes!

And to think, less than a year ago I read six books in seven days.

Stop eating so much and you'll have more time to read, and slimmer fingers to turn the pages.

But food is so good.

Maybe Mote in Gods Eye is a boring book, and you cannot get any traction while reading it.

To paraphrase Paul's very clean grandfather (A Hard Day's Night): "Books will just go putting ideas in your head." Who needs that?

That's right! You oughta be out paradin', 'stead buryin' yer nose in a bleedin' book!

I agree with this, there are just some books that seem to take forever to read, but you'll trudge along anyway hoping that it eventually ends. I've read a couple of these in my day, and when I look back I wonder why I just didn't stop reading said book.

I'm re-reading Frank Herbert's Dune, and I just hit the part where Feyd-Rautha is in the Gladiator ring on Geidi Prime. A little over halfway. I started reading it on Sept 1!

I've read the whole thing in under a month before.

Well he shouldn't have worried--I've seen lots of popular fiction that's not too likely to do that to anyone.... Oh well, even that stuff gives readers brain exercise that they aren't likely to get from the Lobotomy Box.

We'll write slower.

I remember Mote as a fairly entertaining book. I think there's something wrong with Taft. I mean, something else wrong with Taft.

But seriously, yeah, reading speed varies with the book and with your mood and interest level. I seem to read pretty slowly compared to a lot of people; lately though I've been cranking through books at what is, for me, a fairly fast clip. But I'm pretty sure once I get to Jonathan Strange or the Brothers Karamazov, I'll slow right down again.

My wife read the seventh Harry Potter book yesterday, start to finish. I have always envied her reading speed. I run about 600-650 words a minute, 850 if is really good and I am secluded.

Taft, you need to go back to the books you used to read so fast. There's probably a difference in those books and the ones you have now.

My advice, switch it up. Read a non-fiction book about a topic you have no reason to read.

Suggestions: Einstein (Isaacson), Thunderstruck (Larsen).

I've been doing that for as long as I can remember. I almost always alternate between fiction and non-fiction.

Face it, Tiger, you just hit the jackpot.

and Taft has just ruined the greatest moment in comics for me.

I think it's a matter of devoting the TIME to read, but some books take forever to read than others. Aside from masochism, I have no idea how I got through Moby Dick...

Right now, if I get off my @$$, I am reading Albert Camus' The Plague.

Yes, having the time to read is important. I have a lot of books lying around that I am very interested in reading, but I don't have enough time to do that among other things I want to do for fun. I am at least devoted to writing something every chance I get.

I'm trying to read more right now. I'm currently reading The Fountainhead for the first time ever (I know, I know) and I think I'll read....Little Women next. I've just decided. That sounds good. Or maybe I'll re-read Beowulf in preparation for the movie that I might or might not see. Lookin' better though.

I go through stages. There are times when I will tear through 3 - 4 books a week, and times when it takes me 3 weeks or longer to finish a single book.

I had to read DUNE in a week when it was one of the required texts in my science fiction class in college!

I've designed and taught a science fiction class in my current job, and much of my design was based on the course that I took as a student, back in 1991...but I left DUNE off of the reading list. That book could be ample fodder for a class all by itself.

Two friends and I signed up for science fiction in college. We thought it would be cake. Turns out it was a two-book-a-week nightmare.

Tuesday: Well, that was Shelley's Frankenstein. Be sure to have read 20,000 Leagues by Thursday.