[ 3 / biz / cgl / ck / diy / fa / ic / jp / lit / sci / vr / vt ] [ index / top / reports ] [ become a patron ] [ status ]
2023-11: Warosu is now out of extended maintenance.

/lit/ - Literature

View post   
File: 47 KB, 416x680, poster_1984_lrg.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
869686 No.869686 [Reply] [Original]

Ok so I have dyslexia. I have always hated reading because of this. I would get headaches after a few minutes and it was just hugely mentally tiring. Recently I've looked into a few speed reading techniques and just generally any and all ways to help me read more efficiently (reading ruler etc). I decided to really work at it and I've increased my words per minute from about 180 to 600+ in an optimum situation. That in itself is not impressive, many people read much faster but for me, it’s meant I can finally enjoy reading.

So I'm looking for some "classic" recommendations to get me off to a good start. 1984, The Wasp Factory and Catcher in the Rye are the only books I've read so far I would consider classic but I have War and Peace, Lolita, The Great Gatsby, Atlas Shrugged and To Kill a Mockingbird on the way.

Any other suggestions?

>> No.869696

well fucking ace trolling. i raged.

>> No.869698

http://4chanlit.wikia.com/wiki/Recommended_Reading

Also congratulations on working on reading. I've read my whole life, am not dyslexic, and still read at an average pace. But I enjoy hearing the sound of the words in my head. I would have thought hearing the words or speaking out loud would help comprehension, but I suppose not.

>> No.869720

>>869698
Thanks, I'll check out that page. As for the reading bit. Comprehension is still surprisingly good. I think I'm clearly better adapted to reading this way. The process also switches a lot depending on what I'm reading. I cannot even approach academic texts with this technique at the moment, although I am a bit faster and getting better. Second to speed reading it, reading out loud has also been my only other way of reading comfortably.
>>869696
I have no idea why I would be trolling. Clearly I've said something dumb. I apologise for not knowing what lol.

>> No.869734

i'm not being serious, about you trolling. try something like count of monte cristo. it's an easy and engaging read.

>> No.869738

>>869698
isabelle :3

>> No.869741

>>869698
What are you talking about? You can't hear words at 600wpm? Are you sure you don't have a disability?

>> No.869746

>>869698
How do you you zoom in on the pics?

>> No.869759

>>869746
click on view photo detail, lower right corner

>> No.869760

>>869741

>>869698 I right. I don't "hear" the words. Not in the same sense that some people do. If you can hear words at 600pm then great but that's actually pretty fast. You can visualise it here if you want http://www.spreeder.com/app.php (its what I use for web stuff).

Incidentally, people born deaf typically read faster for exactly this reason. They don't hear the words in their head.

>> No.869767

>>869759
Thank you

>> No.869780

I'm reading 1984 right now. Try Les Miserables. Personal favorite

>> No.869791

>>869780
Will have a look, thanks. I know it's clichéd but the thing that got me about 1984 was how many times I thought " well we fucking do that already, shit". I mean there were lots of things I can never see happening, but loads of stuff we are already doing, it was a little scary.

>> No.869801

I'm not entirely sure how dyslexia works, but Lolita, which is also my favourite novel from the list you mentioned, contains a lot of long, drawn out sentences, kind of like this one, so it might be a challenge to read. I can really recommend the book though.

>> No.869807
File: 32 KB, 420x625, Illuminatus.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
869807

Start out with the Illuminatus! Trilogy, that'll give your dyslexia a test and also screen you for schizophrenia.

>> No.869809

Akira

>> No.869815

>>869801
>>I'm not entirely sure how dyslexia works

Neither are neurologists or cognative scientists. They're not even sure if it exists, and diagnoses of dyslexia are never given out by serious doctors who know their shit. Current best guess is that dyslexia is a catch-all misdiagnosis for various other disorders or certain disorders in combination with one another. I don't mean to say that OP is a faker or lying or anything just that dyslexia is most likely not his problem.

>> No.869817

>>869815
>and diagnoses of dyslexia are never given out by serious doctors who know their shit.

Wrong

>> No.869820

>>869815
What? Isn't dyslexia just a diagnostic term for unable to meet age-appropriate reading levels?

>> No.869823

>>869807
He should read Principia Discordia before reading the series.

>> No.869826

>>869820

This anon has obviously never heard an otherwise intelligent individual struggle to read a simple sentence.

>> No.869872

>>869820
>>869815
OP here. Lol I don't take offence. I accept this is actually a pretty big problem in education today. It comes out of a few things but let me say one thing first; there is a significant and growing base of neurological evidence for both structural differences and levels of activation specific to dyslexia.

That being said:
* Misdiagnosis is a HUGE problem. I know several people who were given extra time in Uni exams under the term dyslexic. Many of them deserved it but for other more specific reasons. Time and money restraints means people often just slap on a dyslexia sticker which helps that individual in the short term but damages dyslexia's credibility.

* Dyslexia, like many other mental disabilities, almost ALWAYS occurs alongside other conditions (mine being dyspraxia). This makes diagnosis an even more difficult thing to pin down.

I was lucky enough to get help early on. I'm one of those people who you look at and say, "why is he getting help, he can manage fine on his own". The reality being, if I remove all my strategies, I suck serious balls. I would never have passed my A levels without a laptop (no spell check of course). But with it I got all As. Thats a big difference for a little help.

>> No.869888

>>869872
Just to be clear, by this I mean I typed my exam answers rather than write by hand. That was all though. Literally like Microsoft notepad and nothing else lol.

>> No.869901

>>869686
Catch 22, Farhenheit 451, Animal Farm, The Martian Chronicles

>> No.869931

>>869901
Catch-22 is what I have lined up next after the one I'm on atm thanks. I'll look at the others too.

>> No.869952

>Atlas Shrugged

Burn it or use it as toilet paper. Not worth reading at all.

>> No.870033

>>869952
Why? I like the sound of it from what I've read.

>> No.870059

>>870033
>I like the sound of it from what I have heard
Have you ever noticed that idiots are often really noisy?

>> No.870091

Fuck Atlas Shrugged.

Get The Fountainhead.

John Galt, my dick.

>> No.870134

>>869820
no

>> No.870148

>>870033
>>Why? I like the sound of it from what I've read.
Yeah and you'll like it for like a month after you read it and turn into a total douche bag and all your friends will hate you but that will just reinforce your idea that you must be right and they must be horrible people not worth associating with. . . and then maybe you'll snap out of it and realize that the world doesn't run on libertarian voodoo. . .otherwise you'll just end up like John Stossel.

>> No.870168

i don't care whether anyone's mentioned it already, but it's imperative that you read camus' outsider.

>> No.870173

>>870091

fuck that bitch altogether

>> No.871249

Oh, yay. Another dyslexic. How bad are your symptoms?

Seconded on The Count of Monte Cristo.

>> No.871813

>>871249
Like I said earlier, I'm fine providing I employ all the strategies I've learnt. If I don't I suck. Writing is pretty much a no go these days (although that's more my dyspraxia). When I make notes in lectures, if I don't type them up straight after, with the lecture as context still in mine, I would be unable to read them.

I was lucky. I got A LOT of help when I was younger. At the time I hated it. I spent hundreds of hours in extra lessons learning grammar and language structure. In retrospect it was highly useful regardless of my dyslexia. I remember being in an English class about age 14-15 the teacher mentioned suffixes and the whole class was like WTF?? what are those and I had been forced to learn it about 6 years earlier.

>> No.871816

my dyslexic friend can't manage to spell 2 consecutive words correctly, how are you managing it. is reading dyslexia different from writing dyslexia or something

>> No.871845

>>871816
Reading, Writing and Maths are usually what are thought of as the "types" of dyslexia which I think is probably wrong and contributes to the idea that dyslexia isn't real.

However, essentially you are right. The other problem is that dyslexia is a deficit in certain areas of cognitive function. That means someone with overall average cognitive abilities gets a highly damaging affect from dyslexia because it lowers some functions to levels below the norm. Whereas a person with naturally high cognitive abilities only falls to about average levels in the areas they struggle with.

They both suffer the same deficit but it’s more apparent in one of them. On a brief side note this is, in my opinion, how the idea that dyslexia is a term the parents with money have come up with to give their more stupid children in order to get them help. Typically speaking, higher cognitive ability= better earning ability. Genetic factors come into play meaning smart parents have smart but possibly dyslexic kids.
Dyslexia just as prevalent in rich families as it is in poor ones. But if more of the rich parents can pay for diagnoses (which is expensive, about £300 in the UK if done privately) they you get skewed diagnoses figures.

I'm not saying your friends dumb. There are just a shit ton of reasons why people vary and our inability to accurately pin down dyslexia doesn't help.
Also, sorry for the rant.

I will look at Cristo.

>> No.871865

>>871845
my friend is a prick philosophy student at edinburgh. probably dumb, u r right

>> No.871886

>>871813

Brofist. Sounds like it's more severe than mine. At least you're not pussying out. Writing gives me a hard time too. And to this day I still can't remember how to pronounce words for crap.

You're lucky alright. No one noticed till I was 16. My AP Lit teacher's husband is dyslexic though, so she was sympathetic.

What kind of things were you forced to learn aside from grammar and suffixes? Do they really help?

>> No.871961

>>871886
Anything related to word and sentence structure. Language was my weak point. Any idiosyncratic rule you can think of for spelling or pronunciation that most people just intuitively learn, I had drilled into me. Like you say about pronunciation, now I'm very good at it and can usually accurately pronounce a word I've never seen before because I know the rules (even though English is particularly shitty in this respect).

Definitely worth it but I hated it like anything whilst it was being taught.

>> No.871983

>>871886
Not op. I had extra english classes instead of language classes and that was a bad thing, learning a foreign language as a child helps the brain in a huge number of ways that are each more beneficial than a bit of extra english

>> No.872023

>>871961

Pronunciation rules? That sounds useful. I'll check that out. Thanks.

>>871983

English isn't my first language, so I technically I'm taken care of in that department. And things don't seem so jumbled up as long as I stick with English.

>> No.872044

The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut is one of my faves.