Struggles of a slow reader

Reading is an unparalleled experience that anyone who indulges in it can affirm you. A gateway to a new world, a getaway from the tiresomeness of our everyday life, a glimpse into the lives we wouldn't have experienced otherwise. For some this experience is not the same. The charm of reading simply does not click with them. For another group of people however, the struggle is even more severe. This is the group of people that love to read but are impaired with the curse of doing so in a slow pace. This is the silent scream of a slow reader.

Books are not spoon fed to you. When someone watches a movie or a TV show, they have the whole story put forward to them scene by scene. The atmosphere and the worlds are visually represented. One can get the essence of the story being told simply from a minor portion of attention given to it. The visual stimuli are a big help in this case. However books are a different ordeal. One must read the words, construct the world and the scenario in their head, and orchestrate it as the book goes on. For a slow reader, the challenge is being meticulous about this whole process.

Speaking from personal experience, it often takes multiple reads for me to truly get the essence of the scenario or the emotions described. This leads to reading some paragraphs over and over again obsessively until it all makes perfect sense. It is a very fulfilling moment when that does happen. However, this ordeal makes reading even the smallest of Novels a time-consuming process. This compulsive thought process leads to slow readers like me to be stuck in chapters that we don't even like and unable to move forward.

For some slow readers, the reason is due to not being able to allocate enough time towards a book. What happens is they find a little time to read which is followed by a long absence from it. So when they come back to the book they have a lot of recapping to do about what happened before, thus slowly diminishing the flow to read.

An average day for a slow reader consists of painfully looking at the pile of books they have accumulated, half-read and left in the cold over the years. Each book is a constant reminder of the time that will slowly grasp them before they can finish reading any of the things they would have liked to. Then there is the phase of window shopping in Nilkhet and what not wishfully skimming through some of the books before realizing that this will only go to the pile of unfinished books at the end. Then there is the phase where you go to Goodreads to check up on all the books that you probably would have loved to read but won't be able to get yourself to. In the end they just keep piling up in the to-read section. Slow readers have the best of intentions. Their love for reading only accentuates the pain of not being able to do it as well as the others.

Nuren Iftekhar is your local stray cat in disguise; he interacts with people for food and hates bright light. He got Hufflepuff 3 times straight in Pottermore so no walking around that one. Send him obscure memes at n.iftekhar18@gmail.com