A librarian told me I was reading too fast and missing the story

I picked up a 1950s novel called 'The Living Reed' at a library sale in Des Moines for 50 cents, and I was flying through it in two days. The librarian at the checkout counter said I should try slowing down to notice the descriptions and side characters, so I went back and reread the first 50 pages more carefully. Has anyone else had a librarian or bookseller give you feedback that changed how you approach an old book?

3 comments

3 Comments

jason732mo agoMost Upvoted

Man, that librarian did you a solid. Had a similar thing happen to me with an old Louis L'Amour western I picked up for a quarter at a flea market in Ohio. Was ripping through it, just to get to the gunfights, and an old guy running the booth told me to slow down and read the landscape descriptions because L'Amour was a real traveler and put actual details in there. Went back and read the first part again and he was right, those side details about the desert and the rocks made the whole thing feel way more real.

ivan2302mo ago

Wait, isn't Louis L'Amour mostly known for writing about the Old West in America though? I mean he traveled a ton and put real geography in his books, but Ohio isn't exactly frontier country - that detail kind of threw me off. Still, your main point about slowing down to catch the real details is spot on, that's a good trick for any book.

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wright.eva1mo ago

Cracked myself up rereading that because I'm the exact kind of person who would skim right past the good stuff and miss half the book. I mean, I've done that more times than I want to admit, just racing through pages to get to the action and then wondering why the story felt flat. It's like my brain gets impatient and forgets that the whole point is to actually experience the world the author built. Your point about L'Amour and his real geography is a good one though, especially since I've never even been west of the Mississippi, so I'd probably mistake a cactus for a tumbleweed if I saw one. Maybe the secret is just to treat every book like a slow travel guide and pretend I'm on a road trip instead of just reading.