The Speed Reading Book

I'm not 100% convinced a star rating serves a book like this well, unless I come back and re-rate it in a week, then a month, and perhaps some time next year.

Upfront, this a one-view method for speed reading. When the author's name has a TM, you know you're being fed a line from a very particular angle.

In principle the book lays down how we get tied into slow reading from childhood - because once we grasp the basics we're left floundering to work out anything more of our own accord - and how, if given the right guidance, incentive and motivation we can easily increase our rate considerably. Based on the fastest readers in the world, most people could - potentially - increase their speed tenfold - from 150 - 200 wpm to 1500 - 2000 wpm. show more The fastest speed readers manage getting toward 4000 wpm, so they're consuming one or more books an hour - and comprehending them, too.

To me, I can see the essentials laid down here, but like any skill it'll warrant practice. Motivation definitely figures heavily. Buzan indicates that most adults lose the motivation to read when they exit the education system and their rate drops down to the one they had when they started school. I hit the first test in this book at 156wpm (with 80% comprehension) and did the final test at 294wpm (with 66% comprehension). In the middle, I seemed to gain speed at a loss to comprehension... which, isn't practical or useful. However, if I continue to use the basic techniques and work at it every day - I hope both speed and comprehension will improve and stabilise.

Buzan suggests a doubling of speed is settling for second best (OK, I might be paraphrasing him a little), but if I can attain 300 - 400wpm with 80% comprehension, I'll be happy. If I read productively for 40 minutes in an hour and read for 8 hours a day - that's 128,000 words, which should cover most basic books, or at least a substantial part of them.

We'll see how I manage and improve over the next month - and I'll come back and adjust my review accordingly.

I suppose that I read the whole book (more of less) in one morning has something positive to say about the principles. show less

I read the shortened version of this. There is some good advice in there - just enough to make it worth reading the full edition although on the negative side I thought the exercises were poorly laid out and not really good measures. In the first it said choose any text you want so I picked the trashy novel I was reading at the time. The second exercise uses a piece of non-fiction which is obviously going to take longer to read. This is the only explaination I can come up with for having a slower reading speed at the end of the course than at the beginning :-)

I've just seen a good quote in the (completely unrelated) book that I'm reading over lunch:

"I took a speed-reading course and read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It involves show more Russia" - Woody Allen.

Buzan would tell you otherwise but my gut feeling is that speed comes at the cost of comprehension and retention... show less

Buzan da un repaso a las técnicas de lectura rápida, a los mapas mentales, y hasta enseña como hacer un archivo de conocimiento para ir clasificando y ordenando la información.

Es interesante y además viene con ejercicios de seguimiento para ver tu progreso. La clave como siempre ser perseverante y practicar diariamente. Yo he aumentado la velocidad de lectura pero todavía no he conseguido leer dos renglones a la vez ni otras florituras que se describen en el libro.

En definitiva, es el mejor libro que he leído sobre técnicas de lectura rápida.

Was das Thema "Speed Reading" konkret betrifft, werden ein paar grundlegende Techniken vorgestellt und kurz erklärt. Man merkt, dass der Autor lieber Seminare hält als Anleitungen in Buchform schreibt, mir jedenfalls waren die Anleitungen zu den einzelnen Übungen einfach zu wenig ausführlich. Auch die Übungen selbst sind nicht gerade das Gelbe vom Ei. Um die 350 Seiten voll zu machen, gibt es in dem Buch viel Beiwerk, eine Einführung in die Linguistik, eine Erklärung der wichtigsten Prä- und Suffixe und Verbwurzeln, sowie zahlreiches anderes Beiwerk. Mich hat das Buch nicht motiviert, weiter zu üben, werde mich wohl noch nach einem anderen umsehen.

En instruktionsbok hur man övar upp snabbheten när man läser. Helt OK tips och jag ska testa dem framöver.