Day Two Hundred and Seventy-Five - Returning Some Videotapes

I was always in a hurry to learn to read and conquer bigger and longer books with smaller print and larger words. I learned to read when I was very young and these days I speed through whatever it is that I am reading. It's not really something that I am proud of - but I do tend to speed read everything. This means that I spend my meagre fortune on books and I read them in a couple of evenings. This isn't terribly economical and I've been considering joining the li-berry as a result. And yet, I was curious to see just how fast I do read and could read if I pushed myself a bit so today I speed read a book. The book is just a couple pages shy of being 400 pages with moderately small font [a very nice font actually, though it doesn't list the name] and I read it in about three hours. I have no idea if this is good or not, although I did actually read and not skim which would have been quicker.

The book in question is American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis. Reading this book has become something of a summer tradition [except for last summer when I read Anna Karenina, which is also a fine summer book and highly recommended - American Psycho is not highly recommended as I can think of precisely no one who I know that would enjoy this book]. It's an incredibly verbose book and even though I was speed reading I did find myself re-reading parts of it...but then yes I did gloss over all of the references to audio equipment and one of the rants on music. This book is so, so summer though. Not the sweet, romantic days of summer...but more of a dog days of summer book when you are sick of being hot and always covered in a thin film of sweat and excessively irritable even in the most idea of situations. This book does nothing to relieve these feelings - in fact it makes them worse. I ended up reading it in the bathtub because it gives one the irresistible urge to remove your insides and scrub them clean. I dunno - it's like a mosquito bite that is fun to itch...it's bad for you, but you can't help yourself.

[another summer book that i would consider recommending is my summer of love by helen cross. it gives off the same feelings as american psycho, but is infinitely milder. also, the author is one of joseph's relatives.]