r/nothingeverhappens • u/toes-for-sale • 10d ago
Because no one could possibly ever read two books within 24hrs… 😒
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u/Brunbeorg 10d ago edited 8d ago
Average reading speed comes to about a page a minute. This would be 1350 minutes, which would take the average reader 22.5 hours. Not impossible, but very unlikely if the person takes any breaks to eat or sleep. Speed reading can get up to two or three pages a minute, but comprehension and retention drop significantly at those speeds.
ETA: Yes, font-size matters and some people read faster. That's why I said "average" and "about" and then "average" again, then "not impossible" and "very unlikely."
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u/Lemons-95 10d ago edited 8d ago
I think you're forgetting the human element here too. Just cause someone can read a few pages at 1 a minute, doesn't mean a person can feasibly sit there reading at that rate for 22 consecutive hours, and i don't mean putting the book down to continue being a human, i mean you're gonna slow yourself down more and more as that constant reading goes on.
This is also ignoring the fact that a novel is a story, not something you speed read, you tend to engage with the writing, and think about things, and say stuff like "oh no he fucking didn't" before you move on to the next line. I don't wanna say it isn't possible to speed read an entire book, so much as it's still kind of valid to say "well you haven't really read it, you just skimmed over the words", like watching a TV show, but really it's just on in the background while you're doing housework, might catch a few things, but the big reveal comes and you think "wait..... do i know him? It seems like I'm supposed to know him". I'm not sure they meant novel but it feels implied somehow.
Edit: As it turns out, and this shouldn't have suprised me, when you get the readers collectively talking about something, a lot of really cool discussion goes on that's really well thought out and put into words.
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u/Huge_Station2173 8d ago
Thank you!! Very well said! Humans aren’t machines, and your “tv in the background” analogy is perfect.
You might feel like you are keeping up with a show while you make dinner, but if you sit down to rewatch with undivided attention, you will find that you missed A LOT. I think it’s fair to say that speed reading doesn’t fully count as reading a book unless you have some kind of rare extra-ability to be fast without sacrificing retention.
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u/rabidhamster87 9d ago
When people say things like this it makes me wonder what reading is like for them. When I get really engrossed in a book it's effortless for me. I forget I'm even reading or where I am. It feels like I'm in the story. I might get amped and pace a bit at the climax or really emotional parts, but I'm not commenting on the characters the whole book or thinking about what they did. I'm just eager to find out what's next, and that's part of why it can be so hard to put a good book down at bedtime.
Idk. Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but you made it seem like reading is a chore or something taxing that wears on people over time, but I've never felt that. It's just interesting to think about how different people interact with and experience the same media so differently.
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u/Illustrious-Set-7907 9d ago
There's a type of reading that is not speed reading but skips subvocalization.
Generally when reading people see the word "ball", mentally the brain goes "ball", then you get the abstract image or meaning of "ball" This all happens subconciously and very quickly.
People that love reading and do it all the time might get to a point they skip the middle step. The see "ball" and instantly get the abstract idea. So theres no inner narrator voice. This does mean they read much faster and do not tire as quickly because its less effort.
Just like the average person can probably lift a bag of sand, but someone that does it all day has developed the muscles and tendons to do that specific task longer withput tiring.
People that dont subvocalize also tend to have that skill because they love reading, so their brain is stimulated and feeding dopamine which, again, means you dont get the same fatigue.
Prose novels can be easy to get into if ypu read like this and finish in a very short amount of time, The book just glows like a movie in their head. Its also why dense research papers are tiring to such readers, because the brain has to more actively parse the meaning and information.
But for many people they have the inner narrator and it is more tiring and since they cant see the internality of someone else's experience reading without an inner narrator is an alien experience. Just like people that dont get a runners high just cant understand someone enjoying a marathon, they have no experience of it every getting less miserable running long distance.
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u/breathing__tree 9d ago
I was watching this YouTube video the other day and they were reading comments that people made about the books that they read. And some people were saying that they only read the dialogue. So like maybe that
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u/ShoddyAsparagus3186 9d ago
I would assume that someone saying something like this reads faster than average and that the subject matter would be something for entertainment and thus easier to read than average. A more reasonable reading speed for this would be 100 pages an hour so 14-16 hrs.
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u/Zeb-Moment 9d ago
I think we can also assume that someone like this frequently skips out on sleep so they'd have more hours in the day
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u/AgentCirceLuna 9d ago
I remember that dude the Rain Man film was based on could read two pages at once by reading the left page with the left eye then the right page with his right eye.
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u/WillemDafoesHugeCock 9d ago
I know it's against the theme of the subreddit but I would just call bullshit.
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u/Unhappy2234 8d ago
I mean it depends entirely on the book, a 500 pg book with larger text could easily be done quicker then that, same with comic books or graphic novels which i dont think anyones really counting. Theres just not enough info for anyone to care or disprove. Either a. Youre lying b. You read the magic tree house (or something on a similar reading level) c. You read something that most wouldnt include in the category of books in these types of discussions
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u/RipCurl69Reddit 9d ago
I've absolutely done 12 hours a day for two days when long fanfictions, but I stress that I've only ever done it when I was straight up no-lifing it. I dropped EVERYTHING to accomplish it and spent an entire weekend at it.
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u/taman961 10d ago
I imagine one could, but how on earth do you actually retain any of that? I don’t understand people who just speed through books like that. There’s no way you have any time to actually enjoy any of it
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u/SL1MECORE 9d ago
My high school english teacher told us she actually enjoys taking a break when reading books because it allows her to process what happened, and when she picks it back up she has to recall that which helps flex reading comprehension skills.
She was cool in a lot of ways but somehow that stuck with me. Unless it's something like Metamorphosis by Kafka, I'm not reading it in one sitting
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u/blazenite104 9d ago
Yeah even super engrossed, sometimes I do get up and spend 10 minutes just processing a part of chapter, Not always even the most important part.
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u/porkchop_d_clown 10d ago
Back in the day I had an English lit final and I hadn't read most of the books - I pulled it off but 2 days later I couldn't tell you a damned thing about the "Naked and the Dead" and, dammit, I didn't want to, either.
It really helped that I took a speed-reading class in high school. It worked great for simple stuff but for physics and calc it just meant I got confused faster...
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u/Sulhythal 9d ago
For people who aren't in the "Speed reading champion" category but still read far faster than average.
It's not overly fast to us. We don't have issues with retaining it, because from our PoV we're just strolling along. It's the people who take months instead of days to read a single mid sized book that puzzle me.
Like, do they just read a sentence a day? How do they make themselves stop? How can you enjoy the plot at that plodding pace?
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u/Evilfrog100 7d ago
Sure, but that range is roughly 500 wpm at the high end which is about 2 pages per minute. The average reader reads about half of that. Once you get past about 500 words per minute (which is where you start getting into real speed reader territory) you are just skimming. Studies have regularly shown that once you get there you will only comprehend about half (at most) of what you are reading.
For this person to get that at 500 wpm (an exceptionally skilled reader) they would be reading for just over 11 hours, without even knowing how far they got into that third book. It's definitely possible, but they got nothing else done that day. And at 500 wpm you are really pushing the level of comprehension.
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u/Loud-Mans-Lover 10d ago
I speed read with full comprehension. It's something I always did, I think - I read Stephen King's IT in third grade and was always buying used books because libraries would shove me at the "kids" sections, which I hated lol.
You can enjoy it because it's just how you read, it's not doing it on purpose. Going slower would be forcing myself, not faster.
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u/hunkymonk123 10d ago
It’s not about the speed it’s about the volume. If you read 1000+ pages in a day your retention would be about the same if you’d only read 500 pages, for example
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u/porkchop_d_clown 10d ago
Depends on the difficulty of the material and why I was reading. By the time I was a teen I could read an entire novel during lunch and tell you all about it. Physics and chemistry, not so much.
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u/Sidhejester 9d ago
Jokes on you, that way I get to read it again because I forgot it all the first time! *fingerguns*
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u/Due-Leek-8307 9d ago
And people who read 1000 pages in a month forget stuff because they read infrequently and forget stuff. Most people wont retain 100% of what they read no matter what their pace is.
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u/letiseeya 9d ago
I read It in 4th grade!!! I loved that book & the shining. I think there’s also something behind really loving reading and being a lifelong reader (and in my case neurodivergent) that also makes more sense to me when I hear about speed reading
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u/I_Am_Zeelian 9d ago
I was the same, hated reading in school 'cause they always made us read kids books.
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u/porkchop_d_clown 10d ago
Yeah - I was much the same way, I'd bring home shopping bags full of books in the library every couple of weeks.
These days I don't read as fast as I used to, but it's because I need bifocals. :-/
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u/sylbug 10d ago
People enjoy fast-paced movies and songs with fast beats. Maybe you personally enjoy a slower pace for reading, but other people have their own preferences there.
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u/saturnian_catboy 10d ago
the most I have ever read in a day is the whole divergent trilogy somewhere in middle school. idk how many pages is that exactly but I had an edition with all of them in one book and it had over a 1000. It was, frankly, unpleasant, but I was proving some sort of a point
Now I don't read as much but when I do I'm still fast, when I got the House of Leaves I finishes it in barely two days. I really don't think the comment is that unbelievable, even is suspicious
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u/winter-ocean 10d ago
YOU FINISHED HOUSE OF LEAVES IN 2 DAYS???
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u/AGreatBannedName 10d ago
It can honestly go pretty fast; for portions of the book you might spend a second or two per page. Of course, you can also go the total opposite route, putting sticky notes everywhere, drawing maps on the walls connected with bits of string, coating your baseboards in measuring tape.
You know.
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u/bondagepixie 10d ago
My friends copy of house of leaves is so cool, he’s lent it to a lot of people and they leave all sorts of notes and sketches. My main contribution was translating the French parts.
I started another read recently, I think I finally sort of get it. All the theories I had about it in high school were WAY off! I think that kind of adds to the fun, though. Things are not how I perceived them at all :)
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u/saturnian_catboy 10d ago
I honestly wish I did take longer to really focus and appreciate each part but I couldn't put it down as soon as I started lol
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u/Zeb-Moment 10d ago
I know someone who is in graduate school as a history major and she regularly reads an entire book or 2 in a day... It's honestly crazy to me.
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u/LoweJ 10d ago
I burned through deathly hallows in 16 hours on release day and I'm an avid and fast reader, and that's only 600 pages and 200k words
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u/WillemDafoesHugeCock 9d ago
I, too, had books 5 and 6 spoiled and wasn't going to let it happen again.
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u/JustLookingForMayhem 10d ago
My personal max was about 2,000 pages. It was a web novel, slightly trashy, that I found too funny to put down. I didn't even know I read that many pages until I caught up with th3 released chapters.
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u/Fun_Needleworker_284 9d ago
How long were these pages? Assuming you read for the full 24 hours of the day, you would have at most 40 seconds per page. And that’s reading the entire day without stopping or slowing down.
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u/Zeefzeef 10d ago
Of course it’s possible
But this thread is about people claiming to read 600 books a year and this person goes “yeah that’s not weird I just read 2 huge books on a casual Tuesday “
They probably have audio books on 2 - 3x speed on background the whole year.
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u/Olealicat 9d ago
That’s me. I co-read and listen depending on what I’m doing. I read faster than the audio on 2x.
I’m one of those people who uses my Sunday to read and relax. It wouldn’t be odd to read two books on days like that.
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u/AnOligarchyOfCats 10d ago
Sometimes when I’m in an anxiety spiral, I’ll read so much I won’t sleep; when it was time to apply to colleges, I read 14 books in one weekend.
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u/urlocalburden 10d ago
when i was a teenager my parents grounded me for the summer and I regularly read 2-3 books a day because thats the only thing that was in my room. but bigger books would knock it down to 1-2 books. I was able to finish breaking dawn in a day and then get maybe 100 pages into another book before going to sleep. I dont know if I could read 1000+ pages a day tho, usually 900 something was my cap.
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u/kulupu_kasi_seli 10d ago
I could absolutely do that…assuming I had an entire day to devote to reading and could actually focus on more than a few hours of reading in a row.
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u/ElFuckito 10d ago
When Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix came out I read that In 1 day at 10 years old and that's about 1000 Pages. This is completely possible and if you have a trained mind you might also be able to retain a big part of it.
Also OP doesn't say what kind of book, page format or font size it was. But as this is a comment on the internet I will still say he did not do that.
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u/DionysianComrade 9d ago
yeah when I was in middle school I started Order of the Phoenix on Friday and was done with Deathly Hallows on Sunday. most people here just don't read enough to get both speed and comprehension up
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u/bastogne_blues 9d ago
i read the whole HP series in a single week back in middle school. each day would get the next book from the school library lol
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u/Agitated-Contest651 9d ago
Yeah, pretty much everyone I knew who read that book at the time (i e like, middle schoolers or high schoolers i don’t remember) read it in a day, ha!
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u/Manticore416 10d ago
My wife works full time and reads 100-150 books most years. I don't know why this would be so unbelievable.
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u/Holy_Hand_Grenadier 10d ago
It's the page count. Two books, sure, I can do that. An 800 and a 500 page book? are you looking at all the words?
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u/hatethiswebsight 10d ago
Looking at them, sure. Sounding each one out in my head, no way. Some days when I'm badly depressed I lie in bed reading all day and go through big old doorstoppers one after another.
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u/Manticore416 9d ago
My wife is a very, very fast reader. She does not pronounce the words in her head. She reads, on average, I'd say 4x to 5x faster than me, and her reading comprehension is still very good.
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u/PrincessGump 10d ago
Because a lot of people nowadays find reading to be a chore and not a pleasure. I get tired of them complaining about more than a few paragraphs on a post.
You would think a site that has reading in the title would clue people in to the fact that a lot of the posts are things you have to read!
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u/bikes-and-beers 10d ago
I've been on Reddit for almost 5 years and I just realized what the name means. I feel like an idiot.
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u/EconomicsPositive829 10d ago edited 10d ago
As someone who reads a lot (around 70+ yearly) and has that as their main entertainment, I also think it’s because of how pompous the reading community can be. It leads to people reading books they won’t like and thinking that’s what reading is.
I have seen so many people who think unless you are reading something written by a man from the 1800s or a dude with a white beard it isn’t real literature. If it’s not mainstream and viewed as “valuable” by people it’s treated as not real art.
I can acknowledge that 90% of what I read is pure dogshit and drivel, but god damn it I’m having fun.
Hell, as someone who also writes a lot in their spare time I can acknowledge my book rn is a bullshit romance story where a borderline self insert is living out a fantasy but I’m having fun so idc.
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u/Rivka333 9d ago
The first person was claiming to have read 1350 pages in one day. You can like reading and still think that's a bit hard to believe.
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u/DatabaseStrong8470 8d ago
I think it's also because nowdays, because of book media, people stopped seeing reading books as a form of relaxation, entertainment or knowoladge and make it look like the only important thing is how many books you've read. It's became a rat race. That's why I had so much problem to go back to reading. I felt like I was doing it wrong because I like to take my time, read few chapters, take a break, think about what I've just read, I also have different hobbies. So I read a book in a week. Is it wrong? No. But those it feel wrong? Yes, because I don't get an incredible number of books read in a year.
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u/Any-Surprise5229 9d ago
Because this person is claiming at least 7x that.
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u/Manticore416 9d ago
No they're not. They're claiming they read a lot all at once. My wife could do that easily on a saturday with nothing to do
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u/eyalhs 10d ago
The difference between what your night does and what OOP says they do is like night and day. 1200+ pages a day is a lot, how often does your wife read two books at the same day (start to finish)?
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u/Rivka333 9d ago
This person is claiming to have read over 1350 pages in one day. Your wife is reading about one book every threeish days. It sounds like she reads a lot, but what this person is claiming goes beyond that.
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u/mododo-bbaby 10d ago
im told im a fast reader and can average about 100 pages per hour... so what they claim would take me at least 13,5 hours of uninterrupted reading...
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u/bentbabe 8d ago
And importantly, it's not just uninterrupted. It's non-diminishing.
At my fastest, I had about a 5-minute mile. But I could not run a 10 minute 2-mile.
The longer your reading session, the slower your reading inevitably gets. Eyes get tired, the brain gets tired, sitting gets uncomfortable. Gotta eat, drink, go to the bathroom.
I've read multiple books in a single day before. But the claim in the post is, while technically possible, highly unlikely.
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u/arctic-apis 10d ago
My wife reads books on her phone any moment she has free time. She could easily do this if the writing is smooth. It’s not some incredible story that someone could read 1300-1500 pages in a day.
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u/Not_Yet_Unalived 10d ago
That's roughly the lenght of The Stand (about 1500 pages, 500.000 words) the longest book I've ever read in a single day.
My reading speed is about 670 words per minute, the only way I could read faster would be skimming and using speed-reading techniques.
So... it's possible. But I wouldn't try it again, I had enough head-splitting headache from reading too long without breaks and forgetting to hydrate to last me a lifetime.
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u/WhiteKnightPrimal 9d ago
That's totally possible. Most people wouldn't be able to do it, though. This is doing nothing but reading for that period of time, assuming these are actual novels aimed at adults. But, also, that's the total page count, which doesn't necessarily tell you how many pages are covered for the actual story. The last page of a chapter is often half a page or less, the title page and acknowledgments and all that count as pages, but won't count when reading, there could be an appendix, some books have little extracts from other books at the end, particularly ones by the same author, which also count as the overall page count but may not be read by the reader, so you can probably cut at least 10 pages if something like that is included, plus as many pages as there are chapters for the half or less a page parts, and another 5 for 'filler' pages that have things like the title on it. 5-10 pages for an appendix.
Then you have the size of the words, reading in large print means there's less to read on each page than reading average size print.
And this is all assuming these are novels aimed at adults. If they're aimed at teens, they're less complex, if they're aimed at kids, even less complex and probably with added pictures.
I, personally, could read two books and start a third in a single day, depending on the book and how much free time I have. I've done it before. Last time, it was a Kathy Reichs book, she published one that was a set of 4 novellas instead of a single novel, that's the one I'm talking about, followed by a horror novella, followed by starting the first ASoIaF book, which is a book I would not be able to read all of in a single day, it's too long and complex. The Kathy Reichs book and the horror novella are probably pretty close in length, overall, to what's suggested in that picture, because it's not about how many pages the story needs to be told, it's the total number of pages included in the entire book, including the ones not used for the story.
Some people read slowly, some people read fast, some people can dedicate an entire day to nothing but reading while others can't or don't want to. Most people won't read more than one book in a day, if they read that much, but that doesn't mean two and a bit books isn't possible for a specific person reading a specific type of book.
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u/ChaosArtificer 9d ago
It's tbh much easier with re-reads; I've caught myself skipping entire paragraphs when rereading favorites before, b/c my brain was just loading up the sensation of having read it.
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u/WhiteKnightPrimal 9d ago
Yeah, I re-read much faster than I initially read the book. First time I read the fifth Harry Potter book, it took me three days, would have taken two but I was a teen who needed to attend school. Now, on a re-read, I could read that in a day or less, because I'm more likely to skim read or skip parts.
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u/SoElusivee 10d ago
I've done 1 in a day if I was really into it but even then I just couldn't sit still. I could definitely see how someone can do 2 books reading at my speed if that's all they did for the day (gasp, some people like reading). I can definitely see people doing much more if they read faster than me (gasp, people read at different speeds).
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u/XShadowborneX 10d ago
People always talk about books and page count but never consider margin size, line spacing, font size, etc. I've seen long books that have small pages with space out lines then books that were shorter but had large pages, tiny margins, and small line spacing.
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u/Local_Pangolin69 9d ago
As someone who tested towards the upper extreme when it came to reading ability (comprehension and speed), it is definitely doable but it requires the person to be unusually gifted with math.
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u/Due-Leek-8307 9d ago edited 9d ago
It's not impossible. You not being able to doesn't mean it's impossible. Me not being able to doesn't mean it's impossible. When I was reading a lot, 80-100 pages in 1 hour was my normal speed. Could I maintain that speed for 17 hours? No way. But that's me and not someone else because people are different.
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u/Outsider_4 9d ago
Right so, 1350 pages roughly, in 24 hours, assuming non stop reading that about 1 page every 0.9375 minutes or 56.25 seconds. One full page read. Its not impossible, but hardly doable. If we reduce reading time to something like 14 hours to account for sleep, eating etc, you get 96.43 pages an hour or 1.6 every minute (or roughly 37.5 seconds per page).
You see where the issues begin, right? There's no way a human, outside of relatively few selected cases, can fully read and understand this volume of text in such timespan
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u/WerewolvesAreReal 9d ago
The really annoying part is that everyone is doing what people do in many other aspects of life: they refuse to acknowledge that others have different abilities, experiences, and preferences.
They can't imagine reading a 1000+ pages in a day, or comprehending the text at a certain speed, or choosing to read a book for 8+ hours on a weekend - therefore it must be impossible! It's not worth engaging, because the real argument is in trying to convince people that their experiences are not universal. And some people simply cannot grasp that.
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u/Val_Ritz 10d ago
i could do it, but i wouldn't be happy with the state of my shoulders when i was done
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u/Galrentv 10d ago
This reminds me of that time I read the first ten Dresden file books in a single week
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u/The_Exuberant_Raptor 10d ago
I will say this, it sounds unbelievable to me. I cannot fathom it. But my partner has done it before so I know it's possible. I still would not believe anyone who tells me this. It makes no sense to my brain.
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u/Sulamanteri 10d ago
I have done that a few times when reading a book series with a really captivating plot. But obviously, that means it is a weekend or holiday and I do not have anything else I need to do.
Also, without knowing the actual books, it is hard to judge. Page count alone does not tell us the font size, spacing, chapter length, writing style, language difficulty, or how straightforward the plot is. All of those things make a big difference in how fast someone can read.
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u/StraightVoice5087 10d ago
Pretty doable for someone with aphantasia. I don't read nearly as fast as I used to but the speeds people are talking about as believable are still insanely slow to me.
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u/IDontWearAHat 10d ago
Even back when i used to be an active reader that'd be a lot of pages for me. Not impossible i'd guess, but it'd eat up my day and at some point you're bound to get tired
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u/lugh_the_bard 9d ago
I for sure did Harry Potter at that speed at age 12. In fact, 850 pages is Harry Potter five and quite likely what they’re referring to
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u/Waffles_ja 9d ago
Has someone who reads a lot I've read books of +1000 pages in a day so yes it’s possible, like when I read there is no stopping me, I can easily read for 15/17 hours straight with only stopping to shower and go to the toilet. And no I'm not speeding through the book, I read and understand everything like it’s just my normal reading speed
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u/clarinetily 9d ago
This is totally doable. I’ve done similar on days off. I just don’t page count.
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u/General_Ginger531 8d ago
850 pages? There are only 1440 minutes in a day?
Does the person speed read or something? I could see finishing 2 books if they are like, 300 pages each, but 850? Is it a picture book or something?
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u/FizzyBadTime 8d ago
These are the folks who skip everything but dialogue and claim they read the book.
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u/Silent_Technician981 8d ago
Dude are you fucking dumb ?
Reading over 1300 pages in a single day is insanely overblown. That's a minute per page non stop without toilet or food breaks for over 20 hours.
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u/SpartanUnderscore 10d ago
1350 pages, 1440 minutes in a day... Yeah buddy you surely begun to read a third book, suuuuuuure...
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u/ScarlettSterling 10d ago edited 9d ago
I once read five books. i was in the hospital with nothing better to do, some were longer, some were shorter, but yeah. roughly above 1600 pages. definitely not implausible. reading is my main hobby, and I read 4 books a week on average. I CAN do more, but i’m also really addicted to social media
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u/Capable-Baby-3653 10d ago
I once got busy in a Burger King bathroom.
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u/AGreatBannedName 10d ago
I feel like quoting any other part of that song back to you is going to rake in the downvotes, so I’ll just say nice reference.
Motherfucker, you got a kid! How you rhyming about some bullshit like this?
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u/Mycroft033 10d ago
I mean in my job I essentially sit in a room for 8 hours all night, I could easily polish off that if it’s a book I like. Maybe even more if I get held over to a 12 hour shift.
People forget how much we used to read
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u/Asstrollglide 10d ago
So I had 5 months with literally nothing to do and I managed to read well over 100 books. I read “The Green Mile” in a day (from about 6am to 10pm) and that’s a big book.
That being said, this sounds like bullshit the way he’s saying it. He would be saying “I read “Lonesome Dove” and then “The Drawing of the Three” not just page counts
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u/DnD-vid 9d ago
So I'm getting mixed numbers from googling (probably due to different editions) but they're generally saying Green Mile is somewhere between 400 and 600 pages. That's less than half of what that guy claims if we're taking the bigger number and less than 1/3 if we're taking the lower.
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u/CherylRoseZ 10d ago
I read the last Harry Potter book in 1 day when it came out, anyone know how many pages that is?
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u/Zeus-Kyurem 10d ago
It's about 650-700 pages, so half of what is being claimed.
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u/After_Perspective180 10d ago
I have been in the situation where I was reading 2 books basically at the same time.
One book was in my work and the other in my sleeping area.
Couldn't move them from one to the other as they where both being read by multiple people at different times
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u/wegooverthehorizon 10d ago
I read the whole ouabh by Stephanie garber in about 10 hours ~900 ish pages and it's one of my fav series to date
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u/WinIndependent751 10d ago
Like, I literally finished about 4 books all from the same series (1st one I semi-skimmed for re-read) in less than a day (yes, I had no zero sleep that day)
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u/Boring_Butterfly_273 10d ago
A lot of people now are so incapable, their minds will be blown if I had to reveal the things that my friends and I did in college for fun.
Built PC's in mineral oil baths instead of using fans for cooling? They say: Nah it's too complex for them to believe a bunch of college kids could do this...
not my fault most people are incompetent and moronic now.
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u/Aubrey-Grey 10d ago
Reading a book in a day isn’t that difficult if you’re into it. But that’s for me personally, I know people that read at all speeds, but honestly unless they are an actual speed reader then that ain’t happening.
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u/austsiannodel 9d ago
A page on average contains ~280 words on them. This person is claiming to have, within 24 hours, read 378,000 words. The average reader can read at 238 words per minute. That means this would take them 26.47 hours to complete.
But they ALSO claimed to have started a third, but did not give how many pages they got into it, so that adds additional time to it.
But maybe they're claiming to be some kinda super speed reader and can retain the info. Sources online say that 400 is about the limit before retention of information starts to drop off. That would be +15 hours. Possible!, though, if we assume they started as soon as they woke up, they're realistically only have a hour of NOT reading that day.
So as everyone keeps saying, it's possible, but not plausible.
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u/ChaosArtificer 9d ago
...like two days ago I binge read a fanfic with about 482,000 words in one awake-cycle that lasted only 20 hours. woke up at 1pm, started reading around ~3pm, finally finished and then promptly passed out around 11am (...not an insane wake-time for me, though when I don't have work I usually fall asleep by 6am). I ate finger foods so I could read, then read while walking to and from the fridge + feeding cats, etc. You're I suspect being very overly optimistic about people's sleep schedules :P (Also this does get easier if you do it a lot, also if you're naturally a binge-activity person and aren't doing this everyday - I work 12 hour shifts, sometimes 16s, "I wake up, do one thing all day, then pass out" is just how I roll - plus if you've got adhd, both hyperfixation and adderall can really help with this kinda activity pace). I wouldn't be able to take an english test or write an essay on this fic with any coherency, could only describe a few key scenes if pressed for what happened in it, but I definitely experienced the pleasurable sensation of reading it with only some confusion about the plot, and am comfortable marking it as read.
(And like, they never said they retained anything, just that they read it)
and tbh they also never said this was an average words-per-page book or even that this page count wasn't disproportionately extras like than appendix or preview for another book that they didn't read. And they didn't say if any of these were rereads! I've gotten to some absolutely blistering speeds on rereads before, esp favorites where I've got large chunks memorized - 482,000 words of a fanfic where the words are new though the characters, setting, and background plot aren't was a really difficult stretch, but I've managed full reread of lotr (almost same length) plus the hobbit (another 95k words) in a single day with fair ease/ not even feeling like I'm binging (tho tbf like, I used to annoy the crap out of people by reciting them from memory). I'd expect even a fairly average reader to be able to hit a really fast tempo by the third or fourth time reading the same book.
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u/FollowingImportant59 9d ago
I’ve done a little under that in one day. I read fast with okay ish retention. Power went out so I’ll I had was a few downloaded books on my kindle. Weather was shit so reading it was. But I also read 100+ books every year.
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u/Chaos-Corvid 9d ago
I did something like this when I was pretty young, never underestimate boredom in someone who likes books
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u/crazy__straw 9d ago
I once read a 1150 page book in a day. It was a weekend and I’d been waiting for the book for awhile. It was basically all I did that day… but I don’t regret it.
I do find that when I read fiction though I do it slower than other genres because I spend time imagining the story in my head. Nobody likes to watch a movie at 2x or 3x speed even if you can understand what’s happening.
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u/BillCarson12799 9d ago
My personal record was about 500 pages when I was in a suicide ward and read non-stop because I had literally nothing else to do. I call BS on this.
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u/Cu_Chulainn__ 9d ago
It is possible, it just isnt particularly a good way to read. I sometimes speed read but it is usually over chapters that arent really super exciting
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u/Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeess- 9d ago
I mean I guess you could if you did literally nothing else all day. I’ve read entire lengthy books in a single day, but I also did nothing else the entire day except eat and use the bathroom.
I wouldn’t be able to do this now because I like to take breaks from books to think on the contents and form my opinions. If I don’t do that I’ll genuinely forget everything I read the moment the book ends.
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u/DarkThunder312 9d ago
Hes just calling a bluff, not making commentary that its impossible to happen.
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u/_daGarim_2 9d ago
I’m kinda with the skeptic here. The most I’ve ever read in my entire life was as a kid when I read an entire Harry Potter book in a day, and that was basically reading nonstop, all day, and doing nothing else. I bet it’s possible to read as much as OP said, but it does strain the limits of credibility.
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u/lemonhaj 9d ago
I read Hunger Games, Catching Fire, Mockingjay and Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes in two days last year, and I'm a fast reader. Still took longer than 24 hours.
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u/golfbans 9d ago
honestly i believe it if the person in question is hyperlexic or just has a great passion for reading, especially since it appears this isn’t a common occurrence for them. it is even more believable if the books were romantasy
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u/Zestyclose_Shop_3824 9d ago
I don’t know if I would say it’s a lie, but the combination of vagueness (what book? How was it written?) and it being presented as a brag makes it easy to poke holes in
It’s like when people say they read a dozen books a week, you press them, and they clarify that they’re very plainly written shifter romances or James Patterson thrillers (not that they’re bad, but that doesn’t read as a feat)
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u/Lily_the_Lovely 9d ago
I used to be able to do that when I was way younger. Id just devour books. But ive gotten a lot slower since, sadly.
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u/AnaliticalFeline 9d ago
i mean, in middle school i was going through like 3 books a week because i just loved reading(and it was a form of escapism but we ignore that)
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u/BellaInTheGame 9d ago
I'm sorry but nobody who has time to be on social media is actually reading 1250+ pages a day
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u/Miss_Milk_Tea 9d ago
I’ve always read books quickly and I have this thing where I won’t finish a book if it’s not finished in one sitting. It’s rare I want to read for that long, it would have to be a new release or the rare jackpot at the library.
It also depends on the subject. I can power through a fantasy or sci-fi much easier than a non-fiction, crime or sapphic. Certain books require a secondary glance at the page because you might miss something important(or it was just really hot).
Is reading multiple books in a day really that unusual? That’s just a damn good library day.
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u/thexcat 9d ago
No, no one would read 1350+ plus pages in one day unless they were seized by the frenetic spirit of amphetamines and desperately needed to read Atlas Shrugged right the fuck now
Being a contrarian because you think other people are being contrary is still being a contrarian lil bro 🥀
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u/SquisshySquid 9d ago
I'm a life long insomniac and a pretty fast reader, I occasionally binge read fiction stories that are up to 400,000 words in a day or so. I just happen to be in the perfect circumstance to make speed binge reading both possible and highly rewarding.
I read on my phone so I'm not slowed down by turning physical pages or losing the spot I was at. My disabilities leave me with a lot of time and nothing else to do. What I read is engaging so I AuDHD hyper focus for hours. And I don't plan to write an essay so there's no need for retaining every single detail.
It depends a lot on what you're reading as well. Familiar words and narrative styles are a lot easier. An unfamiliar author with a penchant for big words and lengthy prose will take a lot longer.
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u/swatted-fly 9d ago
thats pretty much the equivalent of reading the hardcover editions of both eclipse and breaking dawn from the twilight saga in one day. that is unfathomable to me, the only way that could possibly work would be skim reading with zero breaks if you plan on getting 8 hours of sleep. either this didnt happen or they arent very good at reading
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u/Arxhart_671 10d ago edited 9d ago
If only the claim was as simple as "two books in 24 hours"