How to Read Better and Faster by Norman Lewis

 

How to Read Better and Faster by Norman Lewis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I must say this was, to me, an extremely useful book. Much more than anticipated. I thought I was a quick reader before, but thanks to the excercises in this book, I managed to increase my speed by another 20% on average. 

Yes, it is lengthy, but it really takes you step by step, giving good guidance and excercises. And even though it was originally written in 1944 (I read the 1958 completly revised 3rd edition), it is far from antiquated. In fact, apart from the obviously dated selection of articles for the reading excercises, the whole was fairly modern.

e.g. p 348 At the beginning of the section about reading critically, the author states that every writer wants to convince the reader of his philosophy, attitude, POV. Even in fiction, a writer is a "special pleader." He continues:
"And, of course, it is almost impossible to pick up a magazine or newspaper today without being bombarded by special pleading. As you turn the pages, almost every writer is saying to you, directly or by implication, "This si what I think; or, This is how I feel; or, This is how I interpret a situation; or, These are the conclusions I draw from the (selected) facts; This is how I solve a problem; or, This is how to do the job; or, This is how I react to what has happened; or, This is how you should react; or, this is the furniture, clothing, perfume, cereal, book, soap, cigarette, automobile, or liquor you should buy, the transportation you should use, the play or motion picture you should see, the vacation you should take, or the charity you should contribute to"; and so on and on, in endless, infinite variety."
And this was written way before the social media age.
Yes, the author uses lengthy sentences at times (and here it serves its purpose), but it is worth the effort.

I also appreciated the author´s thoughts about why to read (both for furthering education, as well as entertainment), and in the chapter about skipping and skimming (which in my opinion is sacrilige), he made an appealing case, and argued that these techniques should be used sparsely, if at all.

So, all in all, yes, these almost 400 pages take a while to get through (ironically), it is worth the effort, in my opinion.

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As mentioned above, it were the excercises that made the difference, compared to other books of this genre I read up till now. 

It contains several ´rapid recognition´ excercises, training your eyes to fixate faster on the written words, as well as excercises to expand your peripheral vision, thus registering more words in one fixation. 

Turned out this really worked for me.

The book trains you, not only to read faster, it also provides you with techniques to comprehend faster, and thus retaining more from the things you read. 

It has, as mentioned, a selection of articles on different themes for the speed-reading excersises, whose structure then gets analysed, so you get a better understanding of how these things are supposed to be structured (clue: not like my rambling here).

It also contains a vocabulary builder of about 500 words. And if I´m honest, I could define only about a third of the selection. Another third, I was in the right ballpark, but couldn´t define the fine nuance, and the last third were.... well, not unknown, but not familiar enough either. 

Again, I must conclude, this book was totally worth my time, and will save me some in future.