Do you still read?

By that I mean books, either paper or ereaders, of some substance? 

It seems with text messaging,tweets and Face Book posts, more and more of us are just getting the briefest of snapshots of information. When was the last time you experienced the joy of opening up a new bookand turned the pages with anticipation of what may unfold through your eyes? 

I grew up in house with avid readers, shared that with Joe and the girls. Now the grandchildren enjoy the pleasure of reading.  It wasn't that long ago JR read me Marvin K Mooney, Will You Please Go Now! He was in BC, I was home in AB.  It was awesome for both of us!

Now I find that I'm reading slower and slower, vocalizing in my head the words and sometimes losing the gist of the point.  What's going on? There's so many great books I want to read, I'll never be able to even scratch the surface.  I belong to 2 libraries and never run out of books I want to check out.  What a delicious problem to have.  On top of that I enjoy listening to audio books, whether they are in cd format, downloaded to my MP3 player or one of the newer Playaway units.  Joe is now a fan of Playaways for his road trips which are less frequent than before.

In years past I as a fan of speed reading and did it very well, comprehending the words at lightening speed and retaining it for future reference. I tripped across this article Double Your Reading Rate recently and am trying it out. Who knows, maybe I can quieten that voice in my head that keeps me sluggishly slow.  Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Stay tuned for a progress post.