The importance of reading

One of my colleagues alerted me to an article by Phil Davis in Scholarly Kitchen about a study of the reading habits of academics.  Evidently there's some concern over whether scholars are reading more or less of the academic literature.  While I was reading Davis' account of the study and its correction, I recalled Roberto Bolaño's dictum that reading is more important than writing.

I'm not the fastest reader.  In fact, I might be the slowest reader I know.  Even my ten year old son reads faster than I do.  Because I read so slowly, I tend to be choosey about what I read.  And if a book doesn't work for me, I'll give it up.  My personal library contains hundreds of half-read books (where "half-read" is defined as any value of pages greater than zero but less than the total).  A lot of these books, I do plan on finishing one day.  Just because I put down a book and don't finish it, doesn't mean the book is bad, just that there was something more pressing to read that bumped it off the stack.

Ten years ago, I started reading Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow.  I was enjoying the book.  (I especially like the bit about the dodos.)  But something happened when I got to page 120.  I got distracted.  (Brain cramp?)  One day though, I'll get back to reading the remaining 640 pages.

So have I read Gravity's Rainbow?  I'd say that I haven't read it.  But I have read 15% of it.  Does that count for anything?

Another thought occurred to me as I read Davis' Scholarly Kitchen piece: what does your typical academic consider to be reading?  In order to read a paper, do you just need to read all the words in the article and examine the figures?  What if there are mathematical formulae?  Is it sufficient to glance at the formulae, or should you try to work from equation 1 to equation N along with the author?  Have you read an article if you've read the abstract, introduction, and conclusions only?  If we take a liberal view and say that an article has been read if one gathers as much as one needs from the text, then I've already read half-a-dozen articles today and will likely "read" a half-dozen more before my "academic work day" ends.  But if I need to have read all the words in these articles, then I've read precisely zero articles.

What is the quanta of reading?