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).

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.

Speed-reading - includes advice request [merged]
 

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. :lol:

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. :up: 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.

Speed-reading
 

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.

[Read speedily....]
 

;) I think I get your gist !