Speed Reading

A colleague of mine once recommended I take a speed reading course.  She told me that after taking this course, she could get through books so much faster and could therefore read more.  Then she started telling me about what she had learned.

I don’t remember all of it, but there were some parts that stuck with me.  Follow the words with your finger or a bookmark so you can fly through the lines without reading over any twice.  Focus on the middle of the line and the rest of the words will kind of fall together; your mind probably won’t notice if you miss a few articles or adjectives. 

I realised that I was already doing some of this.  Not all university assigned reading is entertaining, and there are some pieces that you know won’t end up on an exam, so it can be easy to skim through pages with or without these tips.

I didn’t bring her pointers into my casual reading.  While my coworker had explained that I would be reading more books if I were reading more quickly, it wasn’t an incentive that was selling me on her tactics.  Sure, I could be reading faster, but I knew from the myriad of books I had read during university that speed reading gets you through in a pinch, but it doesn’t give you the same experience going through a book for the pleasure of it does.

I don’t want to understand that something bad happens in Les Miserables (as it does on so many of the pages), I want to feel bad with the characters about it.  I don’t want to guess that Matthew is a sweetheart in Anne of Green Gables, I want to get goosebumps when he insists on puffy sleeves because it is truly one of the most adorable things ever.

Speed reading is great when you have five minutes to get through a piece of writing that you need to be familiar with or want to get the gist of something, but it’s no way to find entertainment. So I’ll pass on the course and save the time to slowly read a book instead.