I'm not sure how much reading I should be doing or what's "normal" in the early stages of a PhD, and wondering how much reading other people usually get through. This week I've read and made notes on around 8 journal articles and I'm wondering how that compares to other people. I feel as if I'm working really slowly sometimes. I'm full-time, but I do teach part-time and have other commitments as well as the PhD. My field is linguistics/education. How about you?

when I was starting not that much, I took the first two weeks just to read, I am in molecular so when I am waiting for an hour I read. Also I find them the sure to insomnia so I keep a stack next to my bed for when I can't sleep

I'm not doing anything remotely scientific, actually it's closer to Literature... so I don't know if it compares, but at the moment the best I can do is 40 to 50 pages of close-reading per day. It's not as much as it sounds because some passages are not at all relevant for my thesis so I only make very basic notes for these, but still, I actually think it's a LOT. It drains all the energy out of me, and by the evening my eyes feel like they're burning. I think I'll need glasses before I know it. I'm just forcing myself a bit because I want to be done by Christmas with a pile of books I have to read first - they're all between 400 and 700 pages :p

I started reading around 3 weeks ago and felt like I was getting nowhere. My subject was completely alien to me and I was taking hours to read one journal (I kept having to look online for the definitions of terms and for the backgrounds to the theories etc before I completely understood what I was reading). I am now beginning to pick up the concepts and although there are a huge number of things for me still to learn, I feel a lot more comfortable when reading the papers.

I'm reading every chance I get at the minute and although I am tired I am also excited which keeps me going.

Keep at it though, you'll get there :-)