reading fast - the choo chain of bookworms

I can't even begin to tell you how much I read. I read a lot. And fast. I can't help reading fast. When I was in grade 4, I had two friends. Brett and Steven. I don't know where they are now, but we were a trilogy at the time. And, like most boys that age, we were uber-competitive.

One of the things we were competitive about was reading. Who could read the fastest? The problem with that is you can always SAY you've read something, but you haven't really. So, what we did was (in retrospect, this is genius), we all read the same book. And we'd read a page. We'd sit around and read a page together. Then we'd quiz each other about what happened. Woe to you if you got it wrong. It meant you couldn't really read fast. It was nerdwars gone really nerdy. Yes, one of my friends had a calculator watch.

I still remember the main book we used was 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. And I must've read that about 20 times that year.

I describe my reading process these days as not actually reading. I can't say I concentrate on all the words. Mostly, it seems to be absorbed into my brain and translated into a movie in my head. Books are insanely visual to me.

You'd think this is a good thing, to read. But actually it's a pain in the ass because it means I soak through favourite authors in days. I find something good, and I'm done with it before I had a chance to feel like I savored it.

It means, sometimes I feel like I'm missing something.

Having said that, I wonder if it's my soul desperately trying to read everything I can read before I die. I wonder if I can take it with me when I do. All those stories. Stuck inside my soul.

David Bowie died today. I didn't really like his music, but I thought he was cool anyway.

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