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what happens if you dont make it? do you just stop reading it?
Bridgit wrote: "what happens if you dont make it? do you just stop reading it? "No, I keep on reading. I just like to see if I can make the deadline. I'm not sure I will this week. I keep getting brain fog.
I usually get frustrated if a book takes me longer than a week to read and I have to make up excuses for why it took me so long. Like last year it took me 2 weeks to read The Physician and in my reading journal I wrote "tooke me 2 weeks but I was working a lot and mom kept giving me projects to keep me from reading". The silly thing is that I'm the only one who would ever really know how long it took me to read something, or even care.
I don't give myself deadlines per se becasue that makes me immediately disinterested in the book I've picked up but I keep a list of what I've read for the year and would like to see it average a book a week overall. I read multiple books at a time so sometimes it will be a couple weeks then I'll finish a few in a couple days.
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Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesnt!
I don't, because how long a book takes to read normally has more to do with my schedule than with the book itself - some weeks I just don't have enough free time. Like Lauren, I usually have several books on the go, so can take a while to finish each one.
I can't set deadlines. I do whatever I can to cultivate the enjoyment of reading, and the imersion into the book's world. For me, a deadline would be a distraction because some books read fast and some read slow. I let the book set the pace.
I can't say I necessarily give myself a deadline while reading (deadlines and I notoriously do not mix), but I certainly find myself growing frustrated if I spend too long with a book. I usually read a couple books per week, so if I spend more than a week with just one book I'm likely to be a little snarly about it. April and May have been busy months for me with family coming from out of town and extra duties at work, so I was unable to read during parts of those months. After a day or two I start getting twitchy. If I had given myself a deadline I think my brain would have melted. :)
I figure that I will spend a day or two with each book and use that as a guideline when I make the list of books I want to read each month. I like to get it as close as possible, because I LOVE crossing books of the list. I don't get crazy if it takes me longer than the alotted time, but I do prefer to keep it under five days if possible.
I don't set deadlines because I never know how much time I will find to read. I do try to read up to five boks a month but that hardly works out.
I don't set deadlines for novels but for short story collections i like to read one story a day.
I can't follow a deadline because if I don't make it I feel bad about my reading abilities. lol. I tend to make impossible deadlines to meet and then berate myself for coming short. So instead I just say to myself, "I'm going to read for half an hour" and I try to read what I can during that time frame. Works out much better this way.
I'm with Jackie. I will set aside time to read and really hope (sometimes pray!LOL) I am not interupted, but it's usually me or my schedule that makes it take longer. I hate giving up, though so if it's taking much longer than I think it should, I'll stay up really late or set aside a good chunk of time to make sure it IS me and not the book. I've gotten better at knowing when to call a book quits.
I figure I can read about 50 pages a day, so then I figure out how many days that works out to for a given book. Then I set that as my "goal" date. Sometimes I don't make it. Other times I'm early. I don't know why I do this, though.
If I haven't finished in a week or so it must not be very enthralling and it usually gets bumped to the side for a better book.
All this talk about deadlines makes me think of Douglas Adams:"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."
For my reading though, I try to set a "soft" deadline of about a week per book. Otherwise I would never take the time to do the reading, but instead cave to the pressure to do other things....like housework. (Those dustbunnies can be very insistent)
I love that quote, vicki_girl! I used it a lot in college.Deadlines would take the fun out of what is supposed to be recreational reading for me. But like Lauren, I like to see my list for the year go up and up. Also am reading multiple books at the same time.
Library due dates serve me well as deadlines!! That and the spring challenge!
I don't set deadlines, I finsh a book whenever I finsh it. Now if I get books from the library that's different because I have a deadline then, but I can always finsh before the books have to go back.
I do like to finish up book within two days, but sometimes it takes longer if the topic is heavy. I sometimes feel like I rush through books to get to the next one and do not enjoy them as much as I could if I were to just take it slower, especially with the Cynthia Task Challenges!!
Not to express any judgement of the readers who read through books so very fast. Each of us experiences books the way that works best for us, of course. But, that said, I remember that when I was 16 or 17 years old there was an educational fad circulating through the schools called Speed Reading. These were special extra-curricular seminars or short term courses that taught students how to zip through reading material at phenominal speeds. The advertised expectation was that this reading skill would be invaluable later in college--and after that in professional life. And these courses really worked for those who followed the exercises and applied themselves.
My experience was that, as a coincidence, at the same time that I was taking these courses and doing these exercises, I was reading The Hobbit Or There and Back Again and then The Lord of the Rings. As I remember at that time, I found the prose in these books very poetic and beautiful.
Part of the exercises assigned by these Speed Reading courses was that we were to attempt to read, in addition to the assigned speed reading exercises, anything else that we were reading anyway (for school or pleasure) in the manner recommended for Speed Reading.
When I applied the Speed Reading exercises to Tolkien's prose, I was indeed able to zip through the pages. But, for me, all the pleasure from the poetic prose was gone. So I refused privately to apply the speed exercises to Tolkien's books. I did well in the course; but the speed reading habits never gelled permanently for me. Today, I can read the dry technical and professional texts that I need fast by using skimming tricks. But pleasure reading is slow, like sipping brandy. Reading good prose fast feels, to me, like gorging good food. It feels like rushing pleasure.
So I pleasure-read at the pace that the book seems to request; and discover later how long it took.
I agree Mosca. My co-worker was bragging one day because she could read 2 books a day because she learned how to speed read. I countered that I couldn't do that because I like to savor books and it would feel like cheating myself out of pleasure.
Like others have said, the only deadlines I give myself are library due dates. Even then, those annoy the crap out of me. There are times where I am so busy, I just don't have time to read, and then I end up either feeling rushed to finish a book and get it back, or have to return it unread. I've even struggled with the challenges because of this. Although I loved making my list and discovering new books, I also really get in moods to read certain books (especially if they are ones I just bought). And sometimes they didn't fit into a category. So I found myself deciding whether I read what I want, or read what I 'have to' for the challenge. I end up reading what I want, and now that I have finished it, I feel like I'm behind on challenge reading. I don't like to feel that way, but I also didn't want to force myself to read something that I wasn't as excited about, because then I wouldn't enjoy if, even if it was good, because I was thinking of something else.
I have personal deadlines depending on the length or density of the book (they range from a day to a week). But they're not urgent or punishment-inducing. The reason I even have them is because if I don't finish a book within the time period, it's because I've put it down for a while. And if I put it down for too long, I won't remember some of the details that become important later in the book, and I'll end up wasting my time by going back and re-reading.
I do read fast but I don't skim, especially when I'm reading for pleasure. It's just me. When I'm really into a book I'm absorbed but if I catch myself skimming the prose must not be catching my eye. The only case I can think of where I've skimmed and still was involved with the book was House of Leaves. The scientific parts were just boring and I'm not going to wrap my head around science that I don't understand when it has little to do with the actual story.
My only dealines are the library due dates, and sometimes I don't make them. They are raising fines at my library system July 1st, so I need to get better about it. I do sometimes return books unread, it used to frustrate me, but I'm okay with it now. I can always check them out again later.
My kind of deadline is I try to give a book 200 pages before I give it up. If it ain't perked up by 200 pages, life is too short to keep plowing through it.I notice the
Twilight series takes about 100 pages and then it gets pretty good.
The Next Best Book Club
Books mentioned in this topic
Twilight (other topics)The Lord of the Rings (other topics)
The Hobbit, or There and Back Again (other topics)
The Physician (other topics)
Does anyone else do this? I'm curious to know. If you do, how longs the deadline? If not, why?