Photoreading

A while ago I wondered into a bookstore, as is my very bad habit... (if I could only read books half as fast as I can buy them). This particular store was located at my school, and it had a vast collection of self help books right next to the counter, these were all on the sort of topics that eager, hardworking students would be interested in. Like “How to improve your memory”, “How to write unbelievably long text” and such. I am pretty much allergic to this sort of literature, as I find it very annoying when some know-it-all tries to tell me that everybody works the same way. This might have something to do with all the teachers that have tried to tell that I will remember what they tell me better if I take notes. I hate to break it to you, but no matter the amount, quality and quantity of research the supports this, my brain refuses to adjust to it. It just doesn’t work for me. This annoyance at any form of generalization usually makes me stay fare away from these books, but that day I spotted an interesting title: Photoreading! It turned out to be about the exact thing I hoped: reading incredibly fast! I already have pretty damn good memory and I don’t even know if I want to learn to write those insufferable academic texts, but I want to read fast. I have dyslexia (word blindness) so reading has always been a bit of an uphill struggle for me. This book advertised that it can be read in 30 minutes. I had my doubts about this to say the least... I thought I might have to use some force (and several sharp metal objects) if I wanted to get that book in my head that fast. I actually managed to do it in about 45 minutes though. You’ll have to read it to find out how, but there was a bit of cheating involved. Every book should be like this! I might be a slow reader, but I’m a quick learner and it’s not fair to have to be spoon fed everything. I prefer to do my own thinking. Anyway, I don’t really remember what sort of techniques were presented in the book, but I am less interested in techniques and more interested in the idea. Instead, I figured I could reinvent my own reading.

I had already noticed that I sometimes read very fast; but most of the time reading feels a bit like walking in deep mud, with big grey clouds forming in my head like muddy cotton candy. At the time I was also reading Shutter Island (great book by the way!) and I found that if I concentrated hard I could almost flick a switch in my head. What happened was that it was almost like the story was playing in my head like a movie. It was awesome! It was like a whole new way of reading, but I can’t really explain it right. I tried to explain it to a friend of mine, but she didn’t really buy it. I suppose I might not understand it if someone tried to explain it to me. At the very least I would have assumed this was not for me and my problematic head. I don’t really know anyone else who is as interested in messing with their own head as I am. At least they’re not as keen to share it as I am. Come to think of it, I have one friend who tells me about strange stuff, but she has this way about her so I always believe everything she tells me. When I talk about stuff like this, I’m usually either depressed or so exited I’m bouncing up and down and talking way too fast... I suppose it doesn’t add to my credibility.

Back on point, (nooooo, I never sidetrack myself! For real!) I suppose my interest in reading as a phenomenon started a few years back, when I read my first book in English. The first pages seemed impossible to get trough, but after a few chapters it was going really good. Now days, it’s so easy that I actually forget which language I’m reading. Sometimes I’m just reading and reading and reading and suddenly there is a word I don’t understand. I sort of slow my brain down and have a real good look at the word. Sometimes this makes it even more confusing. So I look at the rest of the sentence, but suddenly I can’t understand a single word on the entire page (true story!). It might just as well have been Greek or something. It is sort of like I try to look it all up in my internal Norwegian dictionary and become terribly confused when I can’t find it anywhere. At some point I usually remember that English isn’t Norwegian at all and I can sort it all out. This left me with the impression that there is more to reading than what meets the eye.

Whenever my internal dictionairies proves insufficient, whatever the cause, I have a few external ones to help me out… there’s the English – Norwegian, the German – Norwegian, the French – Norwegian, the Finnish – Norwegian, the Norwegian – Norwegian, the English – English and the English Idioms… you know, just in case I’ll ever find the time to learn French (won’t happen) and more German and Finnish…

Other things I have been up to is some towing and some photoshoping: