Why Oh Why Can Some Books Be Read So Much More Quickly Than Others?
Well obviously any post on this subject is bound to be nonsense, because different books may be easy to read quickly for different reasons. Plus, if it were possible to explain in like 1,000 words how to write in such a way that you know how fast it will be read, then it would be a lot easier for everyone to do that and this whole "writing" thing would be solved in an afternoon. I do not pretend to have such a grand solution. But. But. Recently I read the novel Queen Sugar by Natalie Baszile for a class. I procrastinated, of course, which meant I had to read it real fast. Luckily, I found that I was able to speed through page after page without feeling like I didn't understand what was happening. And I started to wonder why. I've always found that I can read some books very quickly, while I find myself reading the same sentences over and over in others. But I'd previously put this down to some unknowable quality of prose, some part of the "magic...