Parts We Skip and Why

[Nuranar]

I'm a very fast reader, and always have been. The first time through a fiction book (nearly all I read, unless under duress) I speed through it, because I'm dying to know what actually happens. But I love to reread books; in fact, that determines whether I like a book or not. It's good if I can't remember all the plot details (important for mysteries), but since I'm not devouring it to see what happens I can go slower and savor it. And even if there is a part that isn't my favorite, I'm dedicated to doing a complete job that I practically force myself to read it! I can't even think of what I would skip if I could. I even read the Appendices! Well, I get bogged down in the part on language a little...

I first read it sometime in junior high, I think. I read the whole thing in about two days, skipping nothing. Of course, a lot of things (the Earendil story, &c.) I didn't understand at the time. Subsequent rereadings made me more familiar with them, and I grew to understand them at least from context. I didn't really learn it, of course, until reading the Silm; but even before then I didn't mind reading the parts. The awesome sense of history those references supply just staggered me. They made the story seem more of a piece with other things, instead of a neat plot with no loose ends or unexplained happenings. It seemed a lot more real. And of course now I do read it gradually and slowly, taking time to notice not only characterization, but also the craft of his writing. I delight in seeing how he chooses just the right words, for sound as well as meaning and connotation, and the sentence structure, as well as when he takes time to describe, when he uses dialogue, and when he writes more generally.

Hmm... Instead of explaining the above, I could just proclaim that "I don't skip!" But what's the fun in that?

Actually, the only times I did skip was when I read it aloud to my father during our work commute this summer. He got lost really fast on all the songs, so instead of enduring them he had me skip them. (I think "Earendil was a mariner" was what really did him in...) But the point is that the skipping certainly wasn't my idea.