The Strangeries of the Mind When Reading

Okay, so I'm not sure if "Strangeries" is an actual word, but you know what it means.

So, I have a question for all of you and it seemed like Office Party was the best place for it.

I've noticed lately that I seem to have 2 reading voices in my head. Like, not multiple personalities, but just 2 discrete streams-of-thought that read along with the words on the page.

Now, the main 1 reads quietly but quickly, and is the one that makes sense of what I'm reading easier. The other 1 is slower but louder. And what I've noticed lately is that I'll start out reading with the quiet/quick one and the slow/loud one more-or-less in tandem, and it's all good.

But when my attention starts to slip, I've noticed that the quiet/quick voice will continue narrating what I'm "reading" and my eyes will continue to scan across and down the lines as if I'm reading, but I'm not actually paying attention to anything I'm reading. This is because the slow/loud voice is thinking about something completely at random and not paying attention.

It's very disconcerting. When they both pay attention, I get a lot read pretty quickly, and I understand it. But when the above starts to happen, I don't pay attention to any of it, and have to go back and read really slowly.

...

So, does this happen to anyone else? At a guess, I'd say that this has been happening my whole life, but that I've only noticed it in the past few weeks. It's very subtle - I can sort of hear the quiet/quick voice tapering off for about 5 seconds while the loud/slow voice thinks randomly about things, and then suddenly I'm not reading at all.

Am I a complete freak? Normal? An alien from the planet Prometheus VII?

(If you've never noticed yourself doing this, perhaps try to pay attention to it next time you're reading. Forcing it may not work, though.)

Phew! So I'm not alone!

It just seemed weird to me. Like, I'd known for a long time that I had different "tones" or "accents" of voice when reading different types of things, but this... This was actually noticing that one part of my brain was quietly (and dying away to silence after about 5 seconds) still reading the book in a noticeable way while the main part of my brain, which I was mostly focussed on, was thinking about something completely different.

Nobody in school ever taught me that I could have 2 coherent thoughts going at exactly the same time!

Mmm. I've heard people say that when they're really upset (like, if they're in a hospital waiting room or something) they can't read properly - they keep reading the same few lines over and over with none of it sinking in.

Now I'm wondering if what I described in this thread is what's actually going on there. A part of their brain *is* reading those lines, but the vast majority of their brain is consumed with worried thoughts about person X.