literacy

[quarrel]

I have a reading problem: I can barely do it. It can be argued that I'm academically illiterate, as I cannot read fast enough for it to matter for studious purposes. I can't keep up if the venue is competitive, I can't contribute to discussions because everyone else has already run through what I'm just encountering, and self-education is a frustrating slog.

Game designers, economists, authors, professors.... One common refrain from them all is the urge to read, or the observation that avid reading correlates strongly with success. Friends, and friends of friends, own entire libraries built up over their lifetimes: fiction, nonfiction, classics, art, poetry, reference, vocational studies, and on and on. I don't. I also can't aspire to it anytime soon. I read at approximately one-fifth the rate of anyone else I know who reads at all; they can go through a nonfiction book or one or two novels in under a week where I need a month and a half. Add that I can't stay focused for very long or maintain interest until the end and the "wall of books" feels uncomfortably close to literal.

Maybe I should have listened in grade school when they tried to teach skimming. Instead I hated it. It felt wrong to force myself to move my eyes so fast that I couldn't see all the words.

Maybe my parents did me a critical disservice by teaching me that books were something you borrowed from a library. Why pay for something you can get for free?

The Black Hole War. How to Win Friends and Influence People. Economics in One Lesson. How to Lie With Statistics. Reality is Broken. Flow. Frankenstein. The Bible. Those are all the books I own right now that I want to read (or finish; I've started the first two). It's not shaping up well.