Great Minds Read Alike

It's been a busy week for me. I spent the last two days looking at amazing new children's books that will be out on the market starting September of this year. I'm so amazed by the power of imagination from all different types of people whether they be writers, editors, artists and designers. The coming together of great minds is bound to create amazing results. Granted some of the books I thought were pretty bleh. But of course, I'm a picky girl when it comes to books.

However, one of the things that I realized during this recent 2-day conference, is that my reading skills are pretty weak. It's very rare that I read a whole book in one day. It usually takes me 2-5 days and sometimes weeks and months, all depending on length, vocabulary, depth of writing, etc. Anna Karennina took me a whole summer! I know this is slow, but I didn't think it was that bad. Until, that is, I heard someone say that they read a 560 page book in one sitting. One sitting? No breaks? Not even trips to the bathroom? I don't think I could manage digesting 560 pages in one day. I don't even know if I'd want to? I like to savor books and enjoy them. But it did make me realize something, especially if I'm going to make book publishing my career, I really have to read faster. I don't want to learn to speedread but I can't take my sweet time. My slow reading skills may be the reason why my homework this past semester took so long to do. The bulk was reading and getting it all done took too much time. So I really want to strive to better my reading skills in 2006. I plan to read more books and create strict deadlines for myself! I may need to do exercises to increase my attention span as that's one of my main difficulties.