Transplanting a Seattleite

You're probably right about the computer screen skipping around effect influencing feelings, but I was thinking specifically of the times I've picked up an e-reader in a store or at a friend's house and read a page or two.

I think productive skimming is a really important skill, actually, indeed crucial for any researcher, and ought to be explicitly taught much more than it is. I was quite taken aback when my daughter S. said a few years ago that she "couldn't skim," and would have to read the chapter in her science book again from the beginning to find the answer to a question. She's gotten better at it since, I think.

This guy, however, is an English professor who appears to assign mostly primary texts, which are supposed to be read intensely and deeply, and when possible with some emotional involvement. You can see why he would be livid at someone suggesting they didn't need to read all of a work, when the class was spending a couple of weeks analyzing it in detail. Personally I have no idea why anyone would do English at all unless they read fast enough that the time spent reading the texts was almost trivial in comparison to that spent thinking and analyzing, but that's me -- and "me" is both a very fast reader and quite lazy.