Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

Do you skim much when you read?

(Definition of skim: to read or glance through quickly)

For me, skimming has been a hard thing to do. I've always been afraid of missing something. However, in order to survive through some books, such as overly descriptive ones, one has to learn to skim. I think it's the key to how some people accomplish reading huge numbers of books. It's a skill.

Are you a skimmer? When do you skim? Any advice on how and when to do it?

It depends on what I'm reading, whether or not I'll skim, how much or how fast I'll read. I agree with overly descriptive passages - often I'll skim through them, read a bit more & come back. I need references to hang the description on. Hmmm...Not quite right. I need a reason to care about a detailed description. Tell me gender, tall/short, fat/thin or some generalities & that's usually all I want or need to know. I don't care about their skin or hair color unless there's a need, so lots of words can easily be wasted on that.

The vocabulary & sentence structure has a lot to do with whether or not I skim. Janny Wurts tends to use a higher level of vocabulary than Charlaine Harris, for instance. I know that every word Janny writes is important & chosen with care. Harris, on the other hand, writes candy books. I enjoy both, but Janny's books stretch my mind whereas Harris tends to be just a quick, enjoyable, obvious kind of story with no real thought needed.

I definitely skim when an author has nothing to say that I'm interested in. Laurell K. Hamilton's latest books are not worthy of my full attention. She is repetitious & pretends to seriously discuss kinky relationships among fantasy creatures - not what I bought the book for or am interested in. She used to write good action books, but apparently lost the ability. I basically skimmed her entire last book & still felt like I wasted my time.

Jim wrote: "It depends on what I'm reading, whether or not I'll skim, how much or how fast I'll read. I agree with overly descriptive passages - often I'll skim through them, read a bit more & come back. I n..."

Yes, it all depends. I agree. For example, there are some descriptions which do nothing for me and yet, there are other descriptions which make me lose my breath because they're so beautiful or so clever.

And yes, there is light reading and heavy reading. I suppose what's heavy to one reader may be light to another, depending on the background of the reader.

One gal in a discussion group years ago seemed to be so well-read. However, when I mentioned a specific feature of a book we had read, she seemed to draw a blank, as if she had never noticed that feature. It was at that time that I surmised she might be a habitual skimmer -- and that was the key to the volume of books she claimed to have read.

I'm a hopelessly lazy reader (aka skimmer). Any time the prose starts to bore me I'll skip paragraphs, even pages. Sometimes I DO miss something that becomes apparent when several pages later and I have to go back and figure out what I missed. The more I'm enjoying the book, the less skimming I do. However, any kind of technical book, a book I'm trying to learn something from, I FORCE myself to not skim anything. This involves a bunch of highlighting on any book I own myself (as opposed to a library book). When in school I used to quickly learn material, pass a test and then forget it just as quickly. Today I forget novels exactly the same way, including even their titles, which is why I value GoodReads as a mean to keep track of which ones I've read. I also have a spreadsheet that helps my faulty memory in this regard. I've always kind of wondered whether what I do is called 'speed reading'? If that involves getting ALL the important material, that ain't me by nay measure.

Jim wrote: "It depends on what I'm reading, whether or not I'll skim, how much or how fast I'll read. I agree with overly descriptive passages - often I'll skim through them, read a bit more & come back. I n..."

I quit Laura Hamilton pretty quickly because I don't care to read soft porn. Not that I got anything against porn, it's just that her version doesn't turn me on, just bores me.

I skim sometimes, the trouble is, then something will pop up that stymies me and I have to go back and read more carefully.

I mostly skim on a reread as usually I'm looking for certain parts I particularly enjoyed, such as the Outlander series, the new one just came out An Echo in the Bone, it is the 7th in the series. I've reread the first 4 but then received Echo, so have stopped the reread. Couldn't wait. /grinning/

Argh! That's my first reaction to skimming. There are times when part of me tries to just skim... then this other part of me kicks in and makes me reread everything that I skimmed because it just feels wrong to skim it! :) Even though I try to skim sometimes, I feel bad about it and reread what I skimmed through. It just makes it take longer to read the book!

Re-reads often need skimming, I agree. Even then, I can burn out on a series. My wife & I started reading a 10 book series the second year it came out. One book was published per year after that. Every 2 - 3 years, we'd have to re-read the series. I was pretty much done with it by the time the last book was published. Same thing happened with Harry Potter.

Earl: I doubt if skimming is like speed-reading. I once took a speed-reading course at Fordham University. The idea of speed reading is training your eye to take in more words at a time as you read, and, at the same time, being able to digest their meaning. It takes practice, practice, practice. I was never able to do it. They say that JFK was good at it. Some people can take in whole lines at a time! Narrow newspaper columns make it easier, of course. That's a good place to practice. At Fordham University, they actually had speed reading machines which flashed phrases at you quicker and quicker as you tried to keep up with them. Frustrating.

Pontalba: I hardly ever re-read, but I can understand skimming under those circumstances.

Jenni: I'm the same as you. :)

Jim: About burning out: I burned out on Graham Greene and Anita Brookner when I read too many of their books. I hope to go back to Brookner some day. She's written more books since I stopped reading her. As for Graham Greene, I've had enough of him. I enjoyed him at the time. Then I lost taste for the mood of his writing which seemed gloomier and gloomier, if I remember correctly. It's been a while. So I can't be sure about that. But that's the impression I'm left with.

I burn out on authors, genres, series & even books because they do get repetitive.

Right now I'm reading a very short book by Stephen King, called The Colorado Kid. I'm about halfway through & have rarely seen so little substance for so many words. I'm taking another book with me to lunch tomorrow because if he doesn't start getting interesting, I'm dumping the book.

Jim wrote: "... I'm taking another book with me to lunch tomorrow because if he doesn't start getting interesting, I'm dumping the book.

I have a book of anecdotes which I used to bring to work to read on my breaks. To preserve the book, I made a brown paper bookcover for it. After a while people started to suspect I was disguising a raunchy book. :)

While reading that book I used to skim over the historical set-up for each anecdote so I could get to the anecdote faster. The book was: _The Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes_.

Below is a sample from the book:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"The abbe was asked if he believed in hell. He replied:
'Yes, because it is a dogma of the church - but I don't believe anyone is in it.' "

-From _The Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes_, p. 415,
re: Abbe Arthur Mugnier (1853-1944), French divine.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Well, I finished it. Waste of time. I don't often give a book 1 star, but this one gets it.

I rarely skim. One reason is because I don't want to miss anything important that will be referred to later on in the book. My skim technique is with my finger and my eyes. I skim using my finger going down each row - this way I feel comfortable skimming.

I skim over boring descriptives. Some authors take 3 (or more) paragraphs to describe something.

Linda wrote: "I rarely skim. ... I skim using my finger going down each row - this way I feel comfortable skimming. I skim over boring descriptives. ..."

Sometimes the descriptions seem like unnecessary fillers to make the book longer. When I'm reading a page-turner, I find them to be annoying interruptions in the plot. I want to scream: "WHO CARES if the sky is a blue color as bright as enamel? LOL GET ON WITH THE STORY!