What’s the right pace for reading a book? We often get told that a book is a page turner, that you can’t put it down, that it races along. Obviously sometimes, for some readers this is exactly the right kind of book to have. Sometimes I get to the end of a couldn’t put it down page turner high speed flat out reading experience, and I feel a bit hollow, a bit cheated.

When I was a child, I liked to read adult books, but did so very slowly. I’d spend more time away from the book thinking about it than I did reading. It gave me time to imaginatively fill in the gaps, to flesh out characters, scenes and story lines with my reflections. I’ve re-read books and been surprised to find how much of it was in my head, not on the page.

The faster a book goes, the less time we have to be co-creators. The less room there is to be wondering why, and how and for what reason things are happening. I think this makes for a thinner reading experience. I prefer slower books, that I can put down, to think about, and come back to.

There’s also practical considerations. Most of us can’t sit down and just read a book cover to cover, and this can make the compulsive page turners a bit awkward. Or, if your child is an avid reader, it can mean late nights with torches and bleary faces for school. It’s good to have a book to read that fits in with your life, and being easily able to put the book down again can really help.

I’ve read books that were so dense with ideas and things that needed thinking about, that I could not possibly have read more than a small segment each day without being totally unfair to myself and the book.

If all you want out of a book is a few hours of entertainment, then the page turner is a good choice for you. However, there are other possibilities. Slower reads can give us deeper immersions in fantastical worlds. Slow books can give us more to dwell on, and can turn out to be more rewarding. We live in a culture that says fast is exciting and slow is dull, but I find all too often that the opposite is true for me.

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