It’s my life’s supreme irony for someone who loves words to be so rubbish at reading.

Mechanically, I can read and comprehend words, phrases and sentences, no problem at all. As sentences build into paragraphs, I start to falter. When paragraphs build in to sections and move up to essays, articles, or books I am in deep trouble.

My problem is focus and concentration; I don’t have enough of either to last beyond a couple of sentences. I do not think it is necessarily attention deficit disorder as such. For example, I can concentrate when I am writing, driving, listening to people, watching a film or going for a long walk. I think this deficiency only manifests itself when I am reading.

I have worked on a number of coping mechanisms to alleviate this problem with varying degrees of success. The most basic technique is to go over the same paragraph a number of times until it sticks in my mind, which is fine for a while but it makes for slow progress and exhausting if you are reading a longish book. Another technique is to set one book aside and read another until I get stuck and then revert to the first or, in a more extreme situation, pick up a third, and so on. You can imagine the confusion my mind gets into after a while. Imagine ordering a three-course meal to be served at the same time and eating a mouthful from each course alternately, and you get the idea of the absurdity of the situation.

I thought my problem were going to be over when I discovered ‘Audible’, Amazon’s spoken word application. Since I am ok listening to people in real life, listening to a book read by a professional with a good voice should be the same. I wish I could say this turned out to be the case. I now have no less than five recordings of different books on the go with maybe five more waiting to be started.

The thing is, I wasn’t always like this. When I was about 14 years old, I became a legend in my own lifetime when I read the entire Les Misérables novel by Victor Hugo (must have been over 1500 pages) in a single sitting, which entailed starting one afternoon, staying up all night and going to bed around lunchtime the following day.

Now a days, if I attempt Les Misérables again and read one pager a day without fail, I reckon it will take me four years and one month to finish it, which would be ridiculous. I am comforted by the fact that it took Victor Hugo about 16 years to write his classic novel.

So, if Victor Hugo sucked at writing, then it’s okay for me to suck at reading.