About Isaac Magaña
Location: Corvallis, OR
Occupation: Computer Support
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Posts: 71
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How fast can you get through an issue? 1 minute, 3 minutes? If you read an issue in a minute, is it possible that you missed something? If you miss something, could you really know if you enjoyed the issue?
There are readers out there who set out a specific time to read their books. I was never like that. I would go to the shop, pick up my books, and then get home and try to read through them all in ten minutes. I would read one issue in two minutes then another issue after that and another after that. I had to fit all my books in a very small time frame for reading, I would never budget my time for reading. Looking back I realized that I shouldn’t have read my comics like that. I was doing myself a disservice by reading comics so fast.
When I was in my ten minute reading zone, my priority was not to enjoy the book. My priority was to read every page in the book and move on to the next one before I ran out of time. If I ran out of time before I finished my stack of comics, it would have to wait until the following week, when I would try to fit more books to less time. This would cause me to read the books faster to avoid a backlog of books, which meant it was more important to get through the books than to enjoy them.
Here I was spending money on some great reading that I wasn’t enjoying. I was treating reading comics like a chore which was a real bad priority. My priority should have been to enjoy my comics, instead it was to make sure my pile was small for the next week. My chore was to get through the stack of my books. I really missed a lot of great things when I speed read through my books.
Comics are a mixture of art and words. A comic is only truly great when you take some time to admire the medium for what it is. When I speed read the books I figured I was getting the important parts of the book, the plot. I was wrong. A comic story is more than the dialogue of the characters. The story of the book is the panels, art, backgrounds, and how they work together. Almost like watching a movie, it’s not just the actors it’s their dialog, the settings, and the chemistry between actors that makes a great movie.
I no longer speed read through my books. I take my time to enjoy each issue for what it is, and I can truly say I enjoy my books now. My book might start to backlog due to my new reading habits, but it’s worth it. I’d rather spend twenty minutes on one issue than ten minutes on seven issues. Under my old priorities it wouldn’t be efficient. I guess I‘m really glad I don’t operate on those old priorities anymore.
