Harry Potter and the Torpid Reader

There are certain things about which I have OCD. Even before I owned a car, I was computing fuel economy. I still do that, these--yikes!--30+ years. My Audi A4 gets about 24 mpg. My 2-stroke 1979 Vespa P200E gets about 40 mpg. I can type up to about 110 words per minute on a full-sized QWERTY keyboard, up to about 30 words per minute single-finger-tapping on my iPhone.

My reading speed was always a constant...fluffy, easy prose about 100 pages an hour. Technical stuff, much much more slowly.

The brain stuff has beaten that down. I just finished the final Harry Potter (Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows, just in case you hadn't heard) and I don't know if I should be happy that I got 18 hours of entertainment out of a $40 purchase, or if I should be upset that I averaged 40 pages per hour of easy prose. I'm tending to put more weight in the latter.

I knew from a very early age that I'd never ever read all the books I wanted to read in a lifetime. As time-remaining crests that hill of less ahead of me than behind me, I wish I could just read faster and faster.

Moreso, though, I wish I could stop wishing. Apologies to The Tubes.

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