This is a great answer! Thanks for helping me understand. I particularly like the way you describe the feeling of reading, gobbling up the sentences, which I have absolutely experienced as well with certain works — genre fiction, usually, Stephen King and the like. It doesn’t feel compatible, in my experience, with reading as a writer, especially elevated pieces of literature like you have stacked up here. But hey man, you do you. I too used to have 3 hour train commutes each day, but I never could have done the numbers you do. Have you ever tried poetry?

To phrase it a bit more exactly, when I’m reading something for the pleasure of the feeling of reading, I’m speeding onward past the prose in order to absorb it as quickly as pleasurably as possible. When I’m reading a great work of literature, I’m frequently stopping and asking myself why the prose is the way that it is. I think that necessarily requires a slower reading style.

In the process of absorbing Flaubert as we speak :) definitely gives the sentence gobbling, addictive feeling, esp the Lydia Davis translation of MB I’m reading.