"One trouble with developing speed reading skills is that by the time you realize a book is boring you've already finished it"
About this Quote
Franklin P. Jones aims a sly jab at the cult of efficiency that treats reading as a race. The gag rests on a paradox: speed promises to save time, yet it can delay the moment when judgment kicks in. Boredom is a valuable signal that tells a reader to stop and redirect attention. If one skims so quickly that the signal arrives only after the last page, efficiency has outsmarted discernment.
The line comes from a mid-20th-century American humorist who specialized in neat epigrams about everyday habits. It also nods to the era’s frenzy for self-improvement, when speed-reading courses flourished and the act of reading was often reframed as a productivity hack. Jones compresses a broader critique into a single punchline: when the goal becomes throughput, quality fades into the background, and finishing replaces understanding as the measure of success.
There is a deeper irony. Faster reading may reduce the pain of a dull book, but it also flattens the experience of a good one. Nuance, cadence, and the slow accumulation of meaning are partly functions of pace. Moving too quickly can blur the texture that helps a reader sense whether a book deserves patience or abandonment. Boredom, in that sense, is not just tedium; it is data. Skipping over it invalidates the very feedback that should guide what to read.
The joke also anticipates modern habits of acceleration, from listening to podcasts at 1.5x to bingeing shows while multitasking. When consumption is optimized, the threshold for noticing that something is not worth the time can rise, because less attention is invested in the first place. Jones’s quip invites a reframing: reading is not merely the act of getting to the end, but the ongoing work of selection and engagement. Sometimes the smartest use of time is the grace to quit early and the willingness to slow down when a book merits it.
The line comes from a mid-20th-century American humorist who specialized in neat epigrams about everyday habits. It also nods to the era’s frenzy for self-improvement, when speed-reading courses flourished and the act of reading was often reframed as a productivity hack. Jones compresses a broader critique into a single punchline: when the goal becomes throughput, quality fades into the background, and finishing replaces understanding as the measure of success.
There is a deeper irony. Faster reading may reduce the pain of a dull book, but it also flattens the experience of a good one. Nuance, cadence, and the slow accumulation of meaning are partly functions of pace. Moving too quickly can blur the texture that helps a reader sense whether a book deserves patience or abandonment. Boredom, in that sense, is not just tedium; it is data. Skipping over it invalidates the very feedback that should guide what to read.
The joke also anticipates modern habits of acceleration, from listening to podcasts at 1.5x to bingeing shows while multitasking. When consumption is optimized, the threshold for noticing that something is not worth the time can rise, because less attention is invested in the first place. Jones’s quip invites a reframing: reading is not merely the act of getting to the end, but the ongoing work of selection and engagement. Sometimes the smartest use of time is the grace to quit early and the willingness to slow down when a book merits it.
Quote Details
| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
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