Read Bill Bryson and Stay Off Malaysian Roads if you Value Your Life

Partly at the behest of one close confederate, and mostly out of curiosity, a few days ago I sat down and calculated the speed at which I am capable of reading, with a few pages from the Bill Bryson novel I've just finished. Bearing in mind that novels are far more digestible than, say, W. V. Quine, at approximately 12 words in a line and 36 lines in a page, my average reading speed came up to 953wpm.

At this juncture I must make a judicious disclaimer: it was the sort of laborious, intense reading that bakes one's neural circuitry and turns one's eyeballs into a kind of wet porridge after a minute or so. In all likelihood, had I continued the test for more than the five minutes I allotted myself, my eyes would have violently mutinied and I'd probably be locked in a permanent gaze with the back of my skull right about now.

Let the record show that any discrepencies of average and mean in my calculations will be invariable nulled by the fact that I stopped at least four times to laugh. Bill Bryson is funny.

At "normal" reading speeds, wet porridge aside, I'd hazard that I read at about 400-600wpm. I use the inverted commas because according to said friend, the speed of speech is 150wpm, and normal average reading speed is about 180wpm.

WPM. Wet Porridge Minutes, ahaha.

I don't even like porridge much.

As I experience it, speed reading's to do with how much of the sentence your own brain supplies. Thus, reading

One thing hadn't changed: the women still don't shave their armpits. This has always puzzled me in a vague sort of way. They all look so beautiful and stylish, and then they lift up their arms and there's a Brillo pad hanging there. I know some people think it's earthy, but so are turnips and I don't see anyone hanging those in their armpits.

Bill Bryson - Neither Here Nor There

becomes, in my head, something like

hadn't changed women still don't shave armpits puzzled vague way beautiful stylish lift arms Brillo pad hanging HAHAHAHA think earthy so are turnips HAHAHAHA don't see hanging those armpits HAHAHAHAHA*falls over*

It seems that the more of the sentence you can anticipate, the less you actually have to take in. Minimum input, maximum rolling-on-floor-laughing.

This is of course a striking parallel with the state of affairs in my head at all times. For example, when I see a sweet old lady in a floral outfit canoodling her groceries as she potters across a main road in KL, my brain will supply the bazooka and the Matrix-style flying leaps across the blur of crazed Malaysian drivers with no conception of the meaning of a zebra crossing. All are evidently trying their best to kill her.

My brain also helpfully supplies the large bullseye painted on her backside. Malaysian drivers are, haha, the 'pits.

This entry is not, I repeat, not a command to read Bill Bryson now nor a desperate warning to stay off Malaysian roads if you value your life, loosely disguised as a post about my reading speed. Nope.