Depends on the book. Most typical books (Terry Pratchett Discworld books, for example), I can finish a book in a day. Something as dense as Tolkien, takes me about a week to get through a book. Took me a solid month to get through Rise and Fall of The Third Reich.

Something as dense as a computer book, especially something like an O'Reilly book, takes me an hour just to get through 3 or 4 pages.

Just wondering if anyone can do it or have tried. I'm thinking of trying it.

If you can, how long did it take to learn?

Fun Fact:

Evelyn Wood is a man, not a woman.

Well, in my opinion, I feel that if you're going to read, you really shouldn't read while you're under the affects of drugs. Whether they're the major or the small ones. Caffine could be an acception though.

so, if you're blind and you speed read braille....do you get blisters?


old SNL reference there.

I've met a few people who claimed they can speed read, but their comprehensiion was horrible.

I tried it a few years ago. I got up to 200 pages an hour. But retention was bad. So it worked. A week after I finished a book I could barely tell you what it was about. But retention was good enough while reading the book.

Now I'm back down to my average, 60 pages an hour. About a page a minute.

I don't have any formal "speed reading" training, per se, but I find that I can turn on the jets a tad bit if I need to. Of course comprehension goes down from 90% to around %75, but it's still not bad.

I don't consider myself a speed reader, but I can get an average paperback done in about 2 hours (~300 pages?) It varies depending on the style of book, though. A series, and especially a licensed property like Star Trek, can go faster because I am already acquainted with the characters and universe.

What's the point of reading if you can't enjoy it?

There are really two kinds of "speed reading." One type of "speed reading" involves learning how to skim for content - reading headings and topic sentences to find the information you want, and only "dipping in" to read in full in select occasions. This kind of reading is excellent when you're trying to process a lot of documents very quickly - for instance, sorting through resumes into "qualified" and "debatable" categories, or going through a stack of research books or papers to find the one or two that have the information that you need. As a method of reading for content, retention, or enjoyment it sucks, but it's very useful in its place.

The other type of "speed reading" is just how fast you read when you're trying to process all the content. This varies a lot from person to person, and for an individual, depending on what you're reading. I think that avid readers do tend to read faster (probably from practice). I know that I read reasonably rapidly as a default; faster for "easy" things (as littlefuzzy observes), slower for dense reads. I'll also deliberately try to slow down when I'm reading something that I enjoy a lot.

I don't know whether the "speed reading" courses/books actually teach you how to improve your normal/reading for full content speed, or whether they just improve the scanning/skimming style of reading. I know that I've read studies of fast readers (who are reading for content, not skimming), and I recognize some of my own characteristics there.

For instance, I generally don't "hear" the words as I read them - I just absorb the concept. (And reading aloud, or hearing things read aloud, tends to feel painfully slow to me.) I also tend to recognize shapes of words rather than reading every letter; for that reason, I have a hard time with novels that have similarly named characters: Bob and Bub have the same "shape" and my brain will try to process them as the same name.

Has anyone here tried any speed-reading programs? I tried two programs that didn't help me at all, and one PDF based course that I found too difficult. Do I need a class? This would be a great help to me as I'm a slow reader but have much that I want to read.
Any suggestions?

Actually how does the speed reading work?

I see my thread got merged. Anyhow, what I meant by speed-reading was not skimming something to get the pith of it (albeit that would be helpful for studying material), but actually boosting comprehension and speed simultaneously (studies have shown that there's a direct correlation between the two, paradoxically as it may seem). I've tried 3-4 programs already and I simply don't have the energy and time to devote to them. What I've been doing recently is practicing reading at speeds 3-4 times as fast as I usually do. My comprehension isn't great, but I hope that, if I continue doing this, I can read at that speed with excellent comprehension.

I think I get your gist !

I took a course, but I had to bring my own book. I finished the book for the course the first night.

It works well for fiction and I can read 2000 wpm with good comprehension, faster if I am just looking for certain material. Obviously you can't read and comprehend highly technical material at this speed.

Mostly based on reading the whole line at once. You start with fairly narrow material like a newspaper column and work your way up to a book page.

You (as a child) learn to read by sounding out words, and many people still read by imagining sounding them out in their heads. You have to absorb them as graphical symbols not mentally-sounded ones, and move past words to line-at-a-time. If the text is too wide for your field of view, try to take it in two glances or try to absorb phrases (use the punctuation).

There are formal techniques for it, taught in courses, but you have to keep practicing. Easy to fall into old habits.

Do you recall what book this is, or can you recommend any?

This is how I read and thus why it takes me a zillion years to finish books. I pretty much read at the speed that audiobooks are read. It's great for good fiction, sucks for everything else.

hookt on fonix werkt fer me.

It was years ago. The course material was a handout, bound in a folder; I don't have it anymore. It was supposed to be similar to the Evelyn Wood method. The "practice book" for the course was "Travels with Charley," an author travels around the country with his dog. But that didn't teach the method.

So, the course was a few sessions of reading a section of the handout to "relearn how to read," practice on "Travels" and take a comprehension quiz.

My high school actually had a summer school course on this. I took sailing which is why I was really there, and speed reading as a lark since I was a skeptic, but if it worked, great!

Anyway, they used some specialized projectors to teach technique. It worked to an extent, but I didn't feel enough to really matter. I sort of became self-taught after that, and can be quite fast. But for novels I don't believe they are written, or paced, for that sort of reading. I enjoy them more at a more tempered, narrative pace, which is after all how the authors write them. In college I would go over study materials quickly, but then slowly again over important passages for emphasis anyway. I still will read news copy, magazine articles, or internet drivel at the faster clip. I don't know my speed, but I could get through a 300 page book in an hour or hour and a half if I wanted, but usually get a more enjoyment out of it taking two or three hours.

If anyone has ever watched the NFL Films Game of the week (which is a time compressed version of the game editing out all but the plays themselves and a few replays) versus the game in real time, you know the difference I am talking about. One is certainly faster, and you don't miss much of the substance, but it isn't the same experience at all.

I never really understood the point of it. I usually like to reflect on what im reading. I could fast forward a movie and come up with some kind of plot summary but it definitely wouldn't be enjoyable.

Hello, I love to read, I just don't read very fast. Any books,advice that you have found useful? Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

I read horrendously slow, but I don't have any problems with it.

I read somewhere that people who read slower tend to absorb more atmosphere and character, whereas people who read faster tend to absorb more plot details. I'd agree with this because I remember the feelings that certain books and stories give me and don't remember plots well at all.

-ringding-