"My dad played a slightly bemused game with me when I was young. How fast can Allison read this?

I read quickly. I think it’s a genetic thing. My father and my son do, too.

The game was simple. Dad would give me a book and then ask later how long it took me to read it. Sounds like a dumb game, but in the fifth grade, I got a lot of mileage out it.

One Saturday afternoon in the kitchen, after watching me plow through a “Nancy Drew” book in about 35 minutes, my father said that I needed to read better books. He took me upstairs to his bookshelves, muttering something that sounded like “See if she can read this in an hour” and handed me Mark Twain’s “Puddn’head Wilson.”

...[continued]