Why I switched to 50-page chunks instead of forcing myself through a whole chapter

I was stuck on 'Ulysses' for three months because the paragraphs felt endless, then I started reading exactly 50 pages at a time with a timer and suddenly the book clicked for me. Has anyone else found a weird cutoff number like page count or time limit that made a tough book actually readable?

2 comments

2 Comments

beth5593d agoRising Star

My husband swears by the 17-minute rule for everything from vacuuming to reading "Moby Dick" - he sets a timer and stops dead when it goes off, even mid-sentence. I tried it once with "The Sound and the Fury" and ended up rage-quitting because the timer went off right when I was starting to make sense of Benjy's section. Now I just read three chapters of anything and call it good, which probably explains why my book club thinks I'm a flake.

reed.ray2d ago

My brother tried the 17-minute rule once and fell asleep on page 12 of the instruction manual.