Reading Matters:

I am a filter-reader: Almost everything that I read has first passed through the filter of my wife.  I am fortunate in this in that my wife is a really fast reader and that she consumes books at 4 or 5 to my one.  When I finish a book she has given me to read, she can give me the best of the next 4 or 5 books she has read so what I read tends to be quality. 

When we first married I felt a little intimidated by my wife’s ability to read so quickly but I have come to realize that we just read differently.  I would not enjoy reading the way she does – rapidly, and commonly skipping ahead to the last chapter because she does not like to be surprised – and she would not enjoy reading the way I do: I savor the sound of every word and I enjoy the progression of the story.  Where she likes to stand back and view the entire tapestry, I get inside and examine the texture of the yarn and the method of the weave.  To me the intricate twisting of warp and weave is as fascinating to me as the image portrayed.

I once read more rapidly, but then I started to read poetry.  In poetry the genius of the work is in the sounds and flavors of the words.  You just can’t enjoy poetry quickly.  And so my reading slowed.  It has become so habitual to speak every word in my mind that I have almost forgotten how to read any other way.

I think I will just let you believe that there must have been a girl wrapped up in my motivation to read poetry; what red-blooded American male would want to read poetry otherwise?

Because of this youthful mistake, my reading has slowed to the point that my silent reading is only as fast as my spoken reading would be if I concentrated on speaking really fast.  I sound out every word in my mind and savor the tempo – especially that of the spoken text within a book.  I crave well written books which will vary the tempo of the different characters speech, and keep my mind stimulated.

Can you imagine a better relationship between two people than the one I share with my wife?  Two people who love to read, and yet read so differently that there is a symbiosis between them.  This is a bonus because it is something I never imagined when we were talking about a future together.  I missed far more good things in her than I missed negatives, so I am much farther ahead for marrying her than I ever imagined.

It is often the little things that matter most.

 

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  One Man