Reading With the Right Brain: Read Faster by Reading Ideas Instead of Just Words (35 page)

“Yes, yes,
how was it now?”
he thought,
going over his dream.
“Now, how was it?
To be sure!
Alabin was giving
a dinner at Darmstadt;
no, not Darmstadt,
but something American.
Yes, but then,
Darmstadt was in America.
Yes,
Alabin was giving
a dinner on glass tables,
and the tables sang,
Il mio tesoro—
not Il mio tesoro though,
but something better,
and there were some sort
of little decanters
on the table,
and they were
women, too,”
he remembered.

Stepan Arkadyevitch’s
eyes twinkled gaily,
and he pondered
with a smile.
"Yes, it was nice,
very nice.
There was
a great deal more
that was delightful,
only there’s no
putting it into words,
or even expressing it
in one’s thoughts awake.”
And noticing
a gleam of light
peeping in beside
one of the
serge
curtains,
he cheerfully
dropped his feet
over the edge
of the sofa,
and felt about with them
for his slippers,
a present
on his last birthday,
worked for him
by his wife
on gold-colored morocco.
And,
as he had done
every day
for the last nine years,
he stretched out
his hand,
without getting up,
towards the place
where his dressing-gown
always hung
in his bedroom.
And thereupon
he suddenly remembered
that he was not sleeping
in his wife’s room,
but in his study,
and why:
the smile vanished
from his face,
he knitted his brows.

"Ah, ah, ah!
Oo!…”
he muttered,
recalling everything
that had happened.
And again every detail
of his quarrel
with his wife
was present
to his imagination,
all the hopelessness
of his position,
and worst of all,
his own fault.

“Yes,
she won’t forgive me,
and she can’t forgive me.
And the most awful
thing about it
is that it’s
all my fault—
all my fault,
though I’m not to blame.
That’s the point
of the whole situation,”
he reflected.
“Oh, oh, oh!”
he kept repeating
in despair,
as he remembered
the acutely painful
sensations caused him
by this quarrel.

Most unpleasant of all
was the first minute
when,
on coming,
happy and good-humored,
from the theater,
with a huge pear
in his hand
for his wife,
he had not
found his wife
in the drawing-room,
to his surprise
had not found her
in the study either,
and saw her at last
in her bedroom
with the unlucky letter
that revealed everything
in her hand.

She, his Dolly,
forever fussing
and worrying over
household details,
and limited in her ideas,
as he considered,
was sitting
perfectly still
with the letter
in her hand,
looking at him
with an expression
of horror,
despair,
and indignation.

“What’s this?
This?”
she asked,
pointing to the letter.

And at this recollection,
Stepan Arkadyevitch,
as is so often
the case,
was not so much annoyed
at the fact itself
as at the way
in which he had met
his wife’s words.

There happened to him
at that instant
what does happen
to people when they are unexpectedly caught in something very disgraceful. He did not succeed in adapting his face to the position in which he was placed towards his wife by the discovery of his fault. Instead of being hurt, denying, defending himself, begging forgiveness, instead of remaining indifferent even—anything would have been better than what he did do—his face utterly involuntarily (reflex spinal action, reflected Stepan Arkadyevitch, who was fond of physiology)—utterly involuntarily assumed its habitual, good-humored, and therefore idiotic smile.

This idiotic smile he could not forgive himself. Catching sight of that smile, Dolly shuddered as though at physical pain, broke out with her characteristic heat into a flood of cruel words, and rushed out of the room. Since then she had refused to see her husband.

“It’s that idiotic smile that’s to blame for it all,” thought Stepan Arkadyevitch.

“But what’s to be done? What’s to be done?” he said to himself in despair, and found no answer. Stepan Arkadyevitch was a truthful man in his relations with himself. He was incapable of deceiving himself and…

The End

How well you master these techniques will depend on how much you practice them. I know how hard it is to find time to practice, but as with all worthwhile goals, you do what you HAVE to do now, so that you can do what you WANT to do later.

Although few goals are free of effort, some certainly have bigger paybacks, and having good reading skills has huge paybacks.

Just as I originally discovered, the main thing to remember is that
reading IS comprehension
. The more you comprehend, the deeper your experience will be and the more interesting the world will be.

Bonus Material

As a small way to thank you for reading my book, I have created black and gray versions of the full books for the first four exercises. You can download the free pdf files here.

www.readspeeder.com/books/the-velveteen-rabbit.html

www.readspeeder.com/books/pride-and-prejudice.html

www.readspeeder.com/books/the-picture-of-dorian-gray.html

www.readspeeder.com/books/the-war-of-the-worlds.html

Thank you for reading my book. If you found this book helpful, will you
please leave a review
? I very much appreciate it.

On the off chance that you really didn’t like my book, could you contact me at [email protected] instead of posting a review? The choice is ultimately up to you of course

Other Books by David Butler

READING THOUGHT-UNITS

Faster Reading through Faster Comprehension
with 12 Specially Formatted Short Stories

About the Author

David Butler is a retired mechanical design engineer. He has applied his conceptual approach for solving design engineering problems, to developing a solution to his lifelong struggle with slow reading, and enjoys sharing this solution with others not only through this book but with the free course at
www.readspeeder.com
, and the free tool at
www.phrasereader.com
, as well as on the blog at
www.thoughtunits.com
. David lives in the scenic mountain forest of Southern California, but when the weather is 75° and sunny, he can usually be found riding his beach bike along the ocean with his beautiful wife.