Desmond Tutu: “Homophobia equals apartheid.”

I’m a slow reader, and this gives me an inferiority complex. Matt reads faster than I do, and so does my dad; so do lots of other people, in fact. I just feel like I read too slow for someone of my intelligence.

I think there are two reasons I’m a relatively slow reader.

The first reason is that I’m overly interested in details. Even though I’ll just wind up forgetting the details of whatever I’m reading, my overly curious brain wants to pick them all up anyway.

The second reason is that I just plain enjoy reading and language. I like to savor the words, and sometimes even the ideas. I’ll be reading something, and it will spark a thought, and my mind will wander off into uncharted regions for a minute or two. And then I’ll realize I’ve been drifting and I’ll get back to the book.

I guess I’m torn between wanting to finish reading whatever book I happen to be reading so I can go on and read even more stuff, and wanting to just sit back and enjoy the act of reading itself.

The thing is, intelligence is so often associated with speed, so my relatively slow reading speed makes me feel dumb. I do sometimes have problems registering information — strangely, I’m usually better at picking up something complex through words on a page rather than having someone tell it to me — which makes me feel not just dumb, but socially undeveloped.

I have more thoughts on the use of text to convey information, which I’ll get to discussing at some point.

Here’s a fascinating Salon.com interview with author Neal Stephenson from April. (You may need to view an ad before getting to see the whole thing.)

(I’ve just begun reading The Confusion, the second book in Stephenson’s “Baroque Cycle,” and I love it as much as the first book.)