How fast can you read?
 

I am always jealous of people who can whip through a book like it's nothing.

I've been trying to increase my reading speed recently... i got a book on speed reading... aparently when you read faster your comprehention is actually supposed to go up. i've seen my speed go up a good deal so far... but nowhere near some people i know...

can you guys read fast? have you just always been able to? or did you learn somehow? what teqniques do you use?

my uncle can literally sit down and read a stack of 3 or 4 books in a sitting.. it's pretty crazy.. and he remembers more from them than i can...

I can read pretty fast if the book is interesting.

If not, I can take a half hour on one page :lol:

Depending what it is, I can sometimes hit 100 pages/hour -- textbooks or other things are closer to 30/hour.

Tuan Jim

i used to speed read as a kid... i was a major book worm apparently

now im just lazy, lol

I can finish a 500 page book in an hour. It takes all the enjoyment out of it, but I can do it.

A couple of years ago, I read so much I got up to 200 pages an hour. It is nowhere near that anymore. I used to average 100+ books a year now I'm only doing around a dozen or so.

I read pretty fast if I am into the book. I read Morgawr in about 4 days (an hour or two a day.) On the other hand it took me about 6 months to read The Two Towers. It is just so draining to read Tolkien, but the story is still great! I don't really read faster, I just spend more time at it every day if I am into the book.

-CM-

I read a lot, but I try hard not to read fast. I like to enjoy it. Usually, I can do a 200-250 page book in a day and a 500, or so, page book in 2 or 3 days.

I'm pretty good at 'scanning' if I'm trying to get through stuff, work related and textbooks and such. But I don't retain or 'process' all of the words.

Otherwise I'm pretty slow. Usually when I'm reading for pleasure I intentionally read slower, take my time to really imagine everything.

what i'm reading says that when you read faster, you actually retain more and can enjoy it more because your brain can process much more words/information than you can read... so if you read faster your brain doesnt get bored etc...

i'm not really sure, just what i'm reading. anyways, they say that (and i've heard other people discribe it as) it just comes to life like a movie or something... but you have to be going at a certain speed for that to happen mentally. kinda weird. i can see that happening every now and then.. but i've just started working on my reading skills..

It took me a whole day to get through this thread.

Then again, I have bad reading habits. First, I started reading it before I went to bed and fell asleep halfway through. Then, I lent it out.

How do you increase your speed? I don't understand it... my eyes can only move so fast.

Generally I read 50-60 pages an hour. I'm not really interested in increasing my reading speed but with so many books yet to be read I do try to finish at least 3 books a week.

My speed completely depends on the book.

If I am really into the book I will go pretty fast and retain a lot. If the book is boring me and/or is poorly written it will take me forever to get through it.

For the type of books I usually read (mystery/suspense/thriller fiction), I usually read about 70 pages/hour. Of course for authors whose books have a larger font and lots of white space (James Patterson, Robert Parker, etc.), the rate goes up to maybe 100 pages/hour.

I haven't any formal training in speed reading, but what you said is true "your eyes can only move so fast" so as I understand it, in speed reading you don't "process (aka read)" (used earlier in this thread and a nice way to describe it) each & every word but instead process sentences/lines of text, or even a whole paragraph at a time. You basically train your eyes and mind to grab a snapshot of and process many lines at once. Someone please correct me if I am mistaken in my grasp of the concept of speed reading. When I am reading fast I tend to scan descriptive passages (maybe read first & last sentence of a paragraph) and pay more attention to the text with characters' dialogue.

In some ways what you've said applies to me yet sometimes the opposite also holds true for me. When I'm enjoying a book, I try to slow down and savor each and every word, and when the book is just so-so, I start to scan the text and read faster. But you are correct better writers are faster reads because of their "smooth" writing style, while poorer writers might cause you to slow down so as to better understand what they are trying to convey.

That is more or less right. You skip the little words and just read the important ones in a sentence and your brain processes the rest. Then like you said, in paragraphs, read the first sentence, skim through the paragraph and read the last sentence. Those two are always the most important. Kinda handy when you get the hang of it. It takes some practice though. Using your finger helps. You may think that sounds kinda odd, but if you use your finger at a certain speed and force your eyes and brain to keep up you can train yourself that way.

i once took a course on speed-reading kinda as an experiment to see what it was all about. basically this is the process. you have a machine that forces you to read each page at a certain speed. afterwards we would be quizzed on comprehension. basically it required you to gather what happened from key verbs and nouns that you picked up as you went. well this was not easy and i often missed important details.

i say if you are reading for leisure, do it at your own pace and what feels comfortable. otherwise it becomes a mental exercise that can be really frustrating.

lol. Just noticed my typeO in my last post. I meant 300 pages/hour. The trick to reading quickly is to not pronounce the words in your head.

I once read instructions on speed reading. Count the number of times your eye stops on a line. It might be five or six stops per line. With a standard paperback book, you can scan the entire line in three (or even two) stops. I tried it for a little while but never practiced it, because it was too much work for what I consider a pleasure.

It supposedly helps a lot to not pronounce the words in your head, but only to read the words as information. It's all I've ever done. As a consequence, it takes a great deal of concentration for me to read poetry. For many years, I had a tin ear and had no concept of bad writing.

I have no idea how fast I read. When I was a teenager, I read two books every night. Now I'm lucky if I read a book in a week.

I have always considered myself a speed-reader with reservations . . . as in I don't trust my speed-reading. Often I will fly through a page and think, did I just read that? I'll re-read it slowly and purposefully and realize that I remembered everything I just re-read. Funny thing is, that's how I read many of the DVD Talk posts - - - I read through a whole thread and say, "what the hell was that?" re-read it again and come to the same conclusion.

I find it hard to believe it's something that can be taught and learned. I think it's something that is developed as a child . . . and you either can or cannot. I can't say that I agree with the fact that if you speed-read your comprehension is better than a "slow" reader . . . unless you can show me scientific studies giving some sort of evidence to the fact. I think reading comprehension has more to do with memory and intelligence than the speed at which it is read.

Others that claim they read hundreds of pages per hour . . . . mmmhh... okay . . . and anyway . . . what is the sake of comparison . . . every hardback and paperback has not only different typefaces but different typesizes . . . everyone's CLAIM is a bit odd . . . it definitely fits the cliche of comparing "apples and oranges".

I can read pretty damn_fast. I only know of one person who can read faster than me, and she's only usually a word or two ahead of me (tested while playing RPGs with scrolling text :)). Even when i read for pleasure, i'm pretty fast. I can usually finish about 30 - 40 pages in a half hour. If its the second or third (or fourth or fifth) time that i've read that book, its usually faster, because i know it so well. I think the reason that i can read so fast is the fact that i learned to read at a very young age (about 2) and i haven't really stopped since then. I'm a HUGE bookworm. I usually finish a 800+ page book every 3 days or so. Of course, I can work my way throught the Belgariad in about 5 days, cause i've read them so much. :)

Fast enough.

Well, depends on how quickly I can mouth each word out while moving my finger over each individual letter.

slow reader here.

sometimes move my lips...

I'm terribly slow.....it probably has something to do with my incredibly short attention span. Plus my reading environment is usually lousy - TV on, people talking in the background and directly to me, mom yelling at me to come eat dinner, replying to ICQ messages, etc. That and even when I am in a good quiet environment, I often go over things I've read 2 or 3 times to make sure I understand what is being said. This probably has something to do with the fact that I read mostly financial type books. More entertaining books go a little faster, still slow though. The place where I read fastest is on the toilet (I think it has something to do with the exhaust fan).