Top Ten Slow Poke Reading Enablers

My reading goal this year is to read 50 books, despite the past few years only being able to read about 35 books. I still can’t believe I read that slow. Yes, I AM THAT SLOW POKE READER... the reason I'm on a hellbent mission to read 50 books this year.

Since that image needs no further explanation, I’m listing the top ten enablers that will have a reader reading slow as molasses.

10. Terrible Comprehension. The frequent inability to ‘get it’ can bring reading to a near word still, where you stay stuck on one phrase, or one word even, for minutes at a time. Let the book be 70, 80, 90 thousand words and this happen repeatedly; you could very well end up spending years with this one book.

9.  And what rhymes with comprehension? Well, Distractions of course. I'm speaking of seeing things, and hearing and feeling things… like a bright sunny day, hot weather, eye candy, or hearing the cell phone Pink Panther’ing over text messages, tweets and emails.

8. And how about Procrastination? That also kind of rhymes with comprehension and distractions. I try to use a little logic with my procrastination, dividing a set number by the number of months remaining in the year, forgetting that the days are zipping by!

7. Small Print is another apparatus that slows down reading. Could the Book Thief’s typist have typed any smaller!?!

6. Long books is a sixth culprit. I still say Too Big to Fail by Sorkin kept me from meeting my 2012 reading goal. I think I spent more time with that one book than I’ve spent with all of the books I own, and my collection isn’t all that shabby.

5. Long books with pictures or lots of reference notes are another hold-up. I have a habit of being unable to look at a picture or read a reference note in long books and move on. Nooooo, that would be too easy. I have to research the notes and stare at the pictures until I’m seeing images that aren’t even on the page.

4. A Mile High to-Read Pile holds me up too. All thanks to this pile, I now plan to patent an idea to save avid readers, and potential avid readers from ending up with books in this stack that simply are not for them.

3. Writing is an obvious hold up. I used to write for half a year, and read the other half. Now, with this and everything listed here, plus a number of other things not listed here, I’m struggling to read as soon as a spare minute opens up.

2. Music I’m putting here, instead of with the distractions, solely because of this one song that has thrown me off schedule by a whole day! Not that I hadn’t heard the song before, but—and in short—some songs have a way of making me lose an entire day.

1. But here’s my NUMBER ONE ticker I couldn’t wait to get to—Finding that ONE book! Oh Me, Oh My... Let me come across that one book and I’ll stay with it like that one song I let play on repeat for an entire day!

“If you can write, that’s great. 

And if you can tell a story, that’s even greater. 

But if you can work a resilient premise into both... 

you’re worth digging to find!”