Personally I just passed the screens for the card at the end. You could save anywhere, so I saved when I got bored and reloaded when I wanted to go on. Anyway, it weren´t more than 15 minutes.
About the story, I didn´t read it at first because back in the day I didn´t know much english. Later, I didn´t read it because the interface to read it was really annoying. Some years later I finally read it, when I could download it in a doc format which is a lot less annoying. It´s interesting, and some parts are fun, but I wouldn´t read it again.