I can’t remember which author it is, but there’s someone on Twitter who gets deeply offended whenever someone says, “Hey, I found your book a really fast read, totally unputdownable!” They completely take it as an insult, because they don’t want to be the kind of author who writes books that might be classed as easy to read.

Authors: please don’t do this. If I read your book fast, it is a compliment, and you’re just willfully taking offence if you decide that it isn’t. I’m a fast reader anyway, and it doesn’t mean that I don’t take in what I’m reading or appreciate your subtleties. How fast I read a book is much less important than how long it stays with me afterwards: there are books which take me months to read and feel like a total chore — do you really want to be one of those?! Because if your book is one of those, I can almost guarantee you… I don’t like it that much.

(There are some exceptions, mood reading and such. But in general…)

Now, there is a time and a place for close-reading. 1) A literature degree, 2) understanding how something is put together because it’s just that fascinating, and 3) you enjoy doing it. I’ve done close-reading for all three reasons — it’s not an impossible thing to hope that someone might do at some point — but most readers aren’t interested in doing that, and most of us just read at our own speed, and savour the book (or not) in our own way.

It’s a compliment, I swear. Chill.