Have you ever read a book so good you don’t want it to end? I have, several times. Add to that the fact that I am a fast reader, and it’s clear that more often than not, those good books have ended much too soon.

These last five years have been different. I started studying Egyptology at the Manchester University. (If you are interested in the subject, you’ll find their Egyptology Online information here.) That, of course, meant that I no longer had much time to read novels. Did I stop reading novels, then? Heavens, no! But now I had to squeeze my reading into a few minutes here and there, where before I could read for hours at one go.

And this usually means reading a few minutes while I was eating, after coming home from work, before beginning my studies.

Oddly, this proved to be a good thing. Now I could savor a good book for much longer. The characters had time to settle in my mind, and the whole story was somehow even more enjoyable to read. There’s slow food, slow living – and slow reading, that makes you appreciate the nuances of the story more, to really savor every sentence.

I finished yesterday a 600-page long historical novel I got as a Christmas present. Normally I would have read the book in three days, now it took me three months. And I enjoyed it very much. The book and its characters became friends after such a long time, and it was a melancholic moment to close the back cover of the book.

I think I’ll keep doing this after my studies end in July this year. I’ll take one book, and read it slowly, a few minutes per day, even if I read other books fast simultaneously.