Reading Speed

Several sites like Longreads and Medium suggest articles for you to read and also the approximate time to read each of those articles…4 minutes or whatever. Looks like now that metric has moved from the digital to the physical world, from articles to entire books: like Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian’s book, Without Their Permission, it had the time-to-read number printed on the back: “5-hour read”!

While Michelle Dean can see the use of such numbers in case of Internet articles:

“I understand that we live in the kind of culture where we are scheduled down to the minute, where reading is a thing you fit into your spare time, which is typically the one hour you spend on the subway each day. So I understand needing to organize your time.”

She doesn’t see the point of it in case of books. After all, she says:

“It certainly isn’t to give you a true idea of what kind of investment is required to read the book.”

Besides, she argues, doesn’t it just lead to a reading race with no real “winners”?

“A slow reader will feel guilty; a fast reader will feel pride; in both cases the feelings serve no useful purpose.”

I am curious to know what Dean thinks of the estimated time to read that Amazon shows on its Kindle based on the speed of the reader, not as a comparative metric. After all, the Kindle number solves a problem I’ve faced before: like when I start reading a book at a relative’s (a book I can’t borrow from them) and wondering if I will get through it before the visit ends!

One of my friends pointed out another benefit of Amazon’s time-to-finish-this-chapter number: it allows you to decide whether or not to complete the chapter before you bookmark without having to flip/scroll to find the end of the chapter and then decide.

So while a digital system showing such numbers is definitely useful, it may not be that useful in a physical book. But it doesn’t do any harm either, does it? If you feel obliged to finish a book in the time printed on it, the problem’s with you!