One every three hours

There is a fascinating article in The Independent today by Thomas Sutcliffe discussing How to Read a Novel by John Sutherland. In essence Sutherland it seems reckons you should be able to churn through a novel in three hours. Where I agree, is with the view held by Sutcliffe, is that some books, War and Peace as a good example, have bits which are read quickly and other bits that are like reading up hill. Keeping a standard pace is therefore very difficult and this does tend to challenge the Sutherland hypothesis.

Why I have no major problem with the idea that to keep up with the amount of books that are in print you have to read faster, maybe Sutherland should refer to the research quoted by Penguin that Says that a heavy reader gets through four books a year. Quite how many words that equates to every three hours (around 10-20 probably) is surely more of a problem than getting those of us who are already bookworms to get reading even more?