Part Two of a Series
Okay, I admit it. I am a slow reader. So far, I have only managed to plow my way through about 90 pages of the best seller, Eat, Pray, Love, by Elizabeth Gilbert. If truth be told, I have been at it for five full days already. My dear mother, a voracious reader, would have finished the tome the day that she bought it – the next day at the latest, if she had had things to do.
My father, meanwhile, would not have even bought it in the first place. He once told me that Gone With the Wind was the only book he had ever finished, and that he had actually wanted to read it a second time, he had enjoyed it so much (no mean feat, it runs 800 to 900 pages).
But he apparently did not enjoy it enough to consider reading any other book. One book, apparently, had been enough.
Slow and Steady Wins the Race
In my defense, one of my English teachers at Skyline High School in Oakland, California, a women with silver locks pulled back tightly into a no nonsense bun, that I really did not like very much (so I will not name her), but who did manage to teach me a few things about syntax (which she told us on repeated occasions was “not a tax on sin, because if they started taxing that, they could eliminate all of the other taxes”), said that being a slow reader was nothing to be ashamed of.
“Slow readers tend to have better English because they pay more attention to how things are written,” she said in her faux British accent.
This was followed, I probably do not need to explain, by a lesson on speed reading. It was very much in vogue at the time.
(In my English teacher’s defense, I suspect that this particular item on the curriculum was probably something that she had had to teach, and that she did not entirely agree with.)
Readers Respond
Writes Sarah in Macau:
Love this series. Am really enjoying it.
26 February 2013 (via Facebook).
Accidental Travel Writer Responds:
Glad you’re enjoying it. It disappeared when I switched servers a couple of years ago. I thought it was time to resurrect it – and now I’ll have to finish reading the book! I’m still only two-thirds of my way through.
To Be Continued
This is part 2 in a series on Eat, Pray, Love.
Copyright: Michael Taylor
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