[olvy0]

Did he actually read War and Peace, The Great Gatsby, Catch 22, Candide, The Picture of Dorian Gray, a Malcolm X biography and two other books during the single month of Feb 1969?? I find that a tad hard to believe... But whatever. I'm a pretty fast reader myself, so I'll take that as a challenge / inspiration for myself :)

[dsr_]

It's entirely possible that he had nothing else to do but read that month. If there was no album currently in production and no tour going on -- both of those things seem plausible for that month -- then it was all available time.

The Great Gatsby is short. Candide is shorter. The Picture of Dorian Gray is fairly short. Each of them might have been read in a day or less. War and Peace is famously long, but at a normal reading pace of 200 words per minute it will only take 40-45 hours -- say, 10 days.

[Thrymr]

"Catch 22" was also presumably read for work, he played Nately in the film version that was in production in 1969: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065528/

[Lio]

Even if he was on tour, it’s conceivable that he had a lot of time in transit to kill.

I’m great at reading in cars but trains and planes are ok for me.

[stephencanon]

War and Peace aside, most of those are pretty breezy reads, so if you’re laid-up sick for a couple weeks with nothing else to do it would be easy to blow through them all.

[alkyon]

“I took a speed-reading course and read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It involves Russia.” Woody Allen

[bslorence]

Well and honestly most of War and Peace is pretty easy and pleasant to read as well (I'm setting aside the philosophy-of-history stuff) -- there's just so much of it.

[stephencanon]

Agreed. But I have literally read most of them in an afternoon at some point, and very much cannot say the same for War and Peace. =)

[jterrys]

From ze vikipedia pages of Simon und Garfunkel:

>Garfunkel began acting, and played Captain Nately in the Nichols film Catch-22 (1970). Simon was to play the character of Dunbar, but screenwriter Buck Henry felt the film was already crowded with characters and wrote Simon's part out.[83][84] Filming began in January 1969 and lasted about eight months, longer than expected.[85][86] The production endangered the duo's relationship;

Entirely possible since they weren't making music, touring or doing fuckall but wait for their part in the movie. Garfunkel's character doesn't have particularly crazy amounts of screen time either.

[goto11]

Lets say this is two thousand pages altogether (half of them is War and Peace). That would be 70 pages a day. This is doable even with a full time job. Certainly more than the average person reads, but easily done for an voracious reader with a flexible schedule.

I don't know how time consuming it was to be a folk music star, but they weren't expected to workout and train choreography all day, the way pop stars are today.

Despite its reputation War and Peace is actually a pretty easy read. Perhaps except the final essay with Tolstoy philosophy of history.

[armadsen]

My wife reads a pretty consistent 200 books per year (not audio books). She's not a very fast reader. She's just very consistent, and reads anytime she has downtime, even in waiting rooms, etc.