Culture + Philosophy

Who Reads a Novel in a Single Sitting

Are you a plodder or a speed reader?

There was a guy in our school who could sit down in the library and finish a book in a few hours. I found it amazing that he could read so fast, while I plodded on through the Narnia books at the pace of a snail.

I’ve only read one book in one sitting, and that was The Little Prince on a 12-hour flight when I was a kid. So I’m not sure that counts. My aunt used to sit down in the morning with a coffee and a novel. And by lunchtime, she would have finished it.

It’s not as if I’m a slouch. It’s just that if someone has bothered to write a book, it seems rude to wrap it up in one sitting. Furthermore, some books have so much in them, that I want to take it in and nourish it. Enjoy the sentiment. I don’t want to plough through it like I’m reading a magazine.

I recently read Réné Daumal’s Mount Analogue, which is only 138 pages long, as he famously died mid-sentence. I read it in French first, which did take me a while. But when I re-read it in English, and having known the story, I still took my time.

I live rurally in France, and so finding decent books — real paper books — is hard. So when I get one, I like to enjoy it, savour it, really understand what the author is saying.

I suppose it's personal choice. I know some lightening fast readers — my aunt for one — who can demolish a book in a few hours. Problem is, I’m a fidgeter, always have been, and doubt I’ve ever sat still for more than two hours in my life.

Whenever I go to the cinema, I generally check the run time. Anything over two hours for me is going to be a struggle. It’s not that I need to go to the toilet, I just need to get up and move.

My father was the same.

“Stop fidgeting, John,” my mother would say to him at dinner. And the minute the last forkful was shovelled into someone’s mouth, he’d be up clearing the dishes.

My father read a lot, but like me, he broke it up into a hundred sittings. And preferred to set himself the task of reading one of The Greats every month. He might have only read ten books in a year, but the books he read were monumental works: Don Quixote, The Brothers Karamazov, The Magic Mountain. Just a few I remember from my childhood. Dog-eared tomes left on a chair as he went to do something, or fix a drink. Then return for half an hour to read some more.

And why not? You can’t read something like The Brothers Karamazov in a day. 900 pages in a single sitting, would be utterly preposterous, even if you had the stamina.

Yesterday I finished Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng. On the back cover, Jodi Picoult said in her review that she read it in one sitting, and for the first time ever I thought I could have done that. I’m not disparaging the book in any way, it was a skilfully put together work. But it was an easy read all the same, and you didn’t need much brain power to guess what was going on.

Which begs the question.

Are books easier to read these days? Do audiences demand easy reads? Do publishers demand easy reads?

I’m not qualified — or well-read enough — to follow this debate through with any integrity. But I suspect there’s a grain of truth in it. Unless, older books are simply harder to read, as they use language that is not common to us.

I’m not going to be blasting through Homer this afternoon. But maybe you are? How do you read a novel? Are you a plodder or a single-sitter? I’d like to know if you’re not too busy, reading.

Thanks for reading. For more book related stuff, see