I'm glad you are reading again. We talked about this, I remember. I'm still way below average and hoping to rectify this.
Wow, you guys are the first I've even seen mention this issue, except for Hugh Laurie during an interview. In his case the problem was not in seeing or understanding words, but because he had himself so trained to short-term memory (recalling and delivering lines) that by the end of Chapter 1 he would forget who everyone in a story was and what they were doing.
In my case, I was an extremely accomplished, very fast, enthusiastic reader until shortly after I turned 18 (many
LONG years past)! It started after I submitted a first novel to a number of publishers and it was rejected all over. My reading slowed to a crawl, as I found myself looking at each word wondering what that author had done, that I hadn't, and whether changing a word or even a number of them would make a particular book better, worse, or indeed much different in many cases. (You know how people get the words to songs wrong but retain the general meaning. Ray Bradbury considered writing a sequel to
Fahrenheit 451 on how the classics could end up butchered due to faulty recall by those who took it upon themselves to memorize them.)
Frankly, my reading has never been as good or for the most part as enjoyable since then, though I have read and enjoyed a number of books over the years. The year I turned 21 was another bad one when I realized I'd read only 11 books (I'd been keeping exact track since just after turning 16 and have very good estimates from earlier) and one of those was the same little kids' book twice. Since then I have imposed an extremely strict quota of no less than 12 per year even if I'm dying. In 2015 I accomplished 14 by reading 10 on New Year's Eve, following spending days in the hospital with a broken leg and then rushing to finish a bunch of Christmas-related projects. A lot of years things got really interesting, when I'd spend most of the year absolutely struggling falling asleep after every three pages of a Harry Potter book, then read 11 Dr. Seuss books on New Year's Eve. Some years my speed was almost up to normal while other years I was just pushing to make 12.
I am happy for a couple of reasons.
1. Audiobooks. They used to be hell to get hold of and the selection was very limited, and now you can just pick up all kinds at your local library or download them online through services provided by the state library through your library. I have more than I will listen to in a long time, and I can be considerably further gone than it takes to mess me up on print books and still be able to listen to audiobooks. (If I can't listen to audiobooks, I listen to music, and if I can't do that then it's
really bad!) A lot of out-of-copyright works are available on LibriVox, and more recent ones on cassette are being discarded by libraries so I pick up a lot dirt cheap that way. Thankful for good hearing and a mother and teachers who trained my listening senses.
2. Online reviews. In case a particular book really isn't all that great, but you've had such a struggle reading for so long that you wonder if it's you. I read a couple by authors I knew had written good books, and one in particular was a staggeringly poor sequel to an award-winning book. The vast amount of negative reviews assured me on that one, as to a lesser extent they did for another I just read.
Since 1978 I have been trying to read every gold medalist and a good many honor books of the John Newbery Award for most Distinguished Contribution to American Literature for Children. What can I say, I'm a glutton for punishment. Once I actually caught up and threw a party! At present I am about eight books behind. Once (years before September 11) when I was in Chicago I stopped into the American Library Association because, well, they present the awards, and they about died from shock. Apparently it isn't a place that anyone visits, but once they recovered from the fact that someone had actually come in their door, they gave me a lovely tour and a lot of posters and pamphlets. Anyhow, I read about three recent (90s-00s) winners in a row which were just bleah, but was assured by others, it isn't you, the committee just made crappy choices those years.
One really pleasant surprise, that doesn't happen often, but
does happen, is rereading books you loved as a kid and finding them even better than you remember! You are left wishing every book could be that good, but it really is a great feeling!
Right now I am still very much in a struggling stage--not having trouble with words, but a lot of noise and interference in my head and feeling so weak and hopeless it is hard to stay awake. This is the worst I've been in about 35 years. I plan to listen to a lot of audiobooks until things improve.
