Asymmetrical Information

Read fast, forget fast.

I have hundreds and hundreds of books around the house, and all I remember about most of them is roughly how much I liked them. If I crack one and start reading, usually the text won't seem familiar, but after a monent I'll begin to recall what the book was about. If I read more slowly I imagine my recollection would be more robust (but who knows?).

Interesting!

Question: Do you ever read a chapter of book at full speed and then go back and force yourself to read it slowly (ie read every word). Do you notice a big difference?

Other thought: for non-fiction, fast reading is fine. For fiction, though, like life, if I go too fast, I just can't really feel anything. Fiction is not just information, it's an experience.

I usually have very little recall about a book a few weeks after I have read, so unsure if that makes me fast, slow or just dumb!

I am the exact same way, but was never able to articulate why I can read so fast. If I said I skip things, people say, "oh so you don't really read that fast then." Which, I guess they do have a point. I just don't consciously skip things. And I read well enough that I did really well on all reading comprehension tests. It's like my brain does a quick "pre-read" where it determines what I need to take in, then I get anything I missed on the 2nd (or 40th) reading.

I also think that the fact that we take enjoyment in re-reading is sort of a self-defense mechanism so that those of us who read a lot don't own 4 1/2 squillion books then one day have a bookshelf collapse and bury us.

I read a lot, I read slow and I re-read a lot. Of course dyslexia may have something to do with that. If I don't focus on the words as I read them I can't retain any of it.

This post describes me perfectly, both in the sense I read fast (which makes reading a newspaper with a SO quite annoying for both of us) and that I realized that I'm chunking information and skipping things.

I read a lot when I was young, perhaps it's the quantity of reading - simple experience makes you learn how to do it.

Seems to me that's a story consistent with adaptive learning and the story I read somewhere once about how humans "chunk" information for memory storage (the idea that it's easier to remember 1 7 digit number than 7 1 digit numbers).

In my limited anecdotal research, I have found the reason why some people read so fast and others cannot is that the latter learned how to read by actually "speaking" the words to what they are reading in their minds, as if they were reading out loud. Those who can read very fast uncoupled that need to "speak" the words in their minds to comprehend what they are reading.

My daughter and I both read fast, and my older son reads almost as fast as we do. My husband reads much more slowly, but almost never rereads anything. If we're all reading a webpage together, three of us end up waiting.

I will force myself to read more slowly for certain books, however. My current "slow read" is "Wind, Sand, and Stars" by Antoine de Saint Exupery (of "Little Prince" fame). The language is beautiful.

My daughter found that "Les Miserables" slowed her down.

I have taken speed-reading training in high school (nearly 40 years ago!) And following that training I was a near-page-at-a-glance reader.

The techniques in which I was trained seemed to focus on traing you to take in several words at a time and forcing you to quit "hearing" the words in your head--the mental equivalent to "moving you lips while you read." (Some speed reading techniques suggest that you hum while you read to short-circuit subvocalization.)

My training was accomplished using a tachistoscope that would blink a word or phrase on a projector screen in shorter and shorter durations, machines that would project text a line at a time at faster and faster rates, and timed readings of short essays that were followed by comprehension tests.

The result? The faster I read, the more I retained. This was reading the full text, not skimming, as verified by the content-based tests taken at the finish of the reading.

While at my teen-aged peak I read ~900 words per minute. I also used to run 5 miles a day. Alas, both of these abilities require daily exercise to retain. I now read ~400 WpM and can walk from my cubicle to the coffee machine and back without becoming too winded.

Let me amend my above remarks to point out that ~400 WpM is my *peak* speed.

Reading devotional text, poetry, or really juicy and scurrilous stuff is done slowly, and with relish!

You're not the only one who skips text to read quickly. I do it as well, but more often when I'm not 100% interested in the subject at hand. When I am reading an argument I need to respond to, I make sure to read every last little word. It is utterly infuriating, however, to argue with people who don't extend the same courtesy. I don't know how many times I've wanted to tear my hair out because I have to explain my position over and over again, while distancing myself from whatever stereotype the other person imagines him or herself to be arguing with.

Being a careful reader also makes the internet a pretty painful place. Most lengthy internet discussions take the form of strong beginning stances followed by pages and pages of misunderstanding and nitpicking.

Sometimes the relevant constraint is simply how fast the pages can be turned. Oddly, I find myself virtually unable to read graphic novels at all, at any speed, although I would like to.

Similar to what Tyler said, I find myself reading different books at different speed-not just graphic novels v. print texts, but different types of print texts. For example, I would have read the comments on this page much faster had I shrunk the page down to perhaps 7 inches in width rather than leaving it at the normal maximized screen. Alas, I've found I'm not very able to predict in advance of reading which books I will be able to read quickly and which will go more slowly. Time for some empirical investigation!

I think it's significant that those were "college lit classes" in which you made As despite skipping paragraphs. ;-)

In high school I tested at 400 wpm. But I cheated. I read half of it twice. I also have a casual speed and a "study" speed and the 400 was study speed.

In high school I was tested in English class a couple times and each time I read ~1000wpm, and I'm convinced I was reading S/F even faster. Of course, I'm been reading at least a book a day for my whole life. Now I'm much slower though, first because I now read a book a week at most. Second because I got tired of skipping sentences. After marrying a writer I became more interested in writing as a skill, and I started slowing down to appreciate the writing, not just the story. Third is that I'm just a lot pickier about what I read. I'm not sure there are 365 good books written each year, but there are definitely 52. My current pace keeps me in equilibrium with the rate of releases of top notch SF writing, a dozen non-fiction books a year, and a bunch of graphic novels.

The best way to skim fiction is to focus on what counts: dialogue. This is a great lesson for aspiring writers: Exposition is passive. Make the spoken word sing.

Those who can read very fast uncoupled that need to "speak" the words in their minds to comprehend what they are reading.

Interesting. But it's hard for me to think about what I'm reading without hearing it spoken in my head. I read a fair bit. I read fiction fast, but technical material goes very slow. I tend to have an auditory memory, so if I remember an event I mostly hear my thoughts about the event played back. I can remember visuals too, but they're cloudy. I wonder how a person thinks influences how they read.

It's interesting to hear that other people do the skipping thing too. I am like Jane, that I re-read a lot, and I do find that I pick up new details each time (or almost every time). There's a book I've read, oh, 10-12 times, and only on the last time did I understand a certain scene, and who was doing what to whom.

For me when I read, I'm not actually hearing the words at all, and if I consciously read out loud, it can feel painfully slow at times.

When I was younger (and still now to a lesser extent, although I've had some training/self-practice at multitask-thinking) I would get completely immersed in a book and not look up until I'd finished at least a large chunk of it, to the point that my mom created "break-words" that would snap me out of reading even if was just in the living room. Also, I find it still true that there's almost a feeling of "thought vs. physical time dilation" where it seems like a long time has passed because i've been reading so much, and the reality is that it's been a much shorter period than it feels like. I also think I stare at books when I read them, if that matters, because my eyes get extremely wonked out after I 'speed-read' something, especially SF or Fantasy epic kind of books.

Does anyone else feel a compulsion to read as many articles on the BBC Worldnews Website as possible each day?

It's so nice to hear I'm not the only one I'm always being embarassed when discussing books - I forget key parts so quickly! Even though I noticed them at the time. I don't think I'm as fast as some on this comment thread, but I'm up there.

The thing I've found difficult is forcing myself to slow down for business documents - sometimes it really matters to read every word, but I find it really hard to do it for any length of time.

Like many here I read non-fiction much more quickly because I skim. I consciously read fiction more slowly, word by word, because I want to experience the language as much, or more than, the story. A well crafted phrase or sentence or paragraph is a treat.

I'd love to know how this thread would be different if it were in Chinese.

I'll second the "pre-read" theory, though I have only my own anecdotal evidence. When I turn a page, my conscious awareness will be half-way down the left-hand page when I am startled into awareness by the realization that there's a misspelled word halfway down the right-hand page. I'm not there yet, but my eyes are.

I do read fast, but the problem is that I can't read slowly, and when I was a grad student in mathematics, I'd read the same sentence 40 times while I was trying to understand it at the level of detail math requires, but I couldn't read it slowly enough to read it just once.

And possibly as a result, I read fiction much faster than non-fiction; fiction is just for passing the time, anyway, and if you miss something so what? Self-consciously "writerly" fiction is painful. And I can't read poetry at all; when you've been trained for years to strip any text to its propositional content there's not much left to poetry.

Our brains can specialize in a delightful variety of intriguing ways, can't they?

wow -- we read the exact same way. it also took me several years to figure out why i finish books so quickly, and i finally realized that it's b/c i tend to skip the parts i find boring or that don't add to my enjoyment of the novel (i don't really skip when reading non-fiction). i find that i don't miss much, b/c often novels are positively packed w/ superfluous details.

and i'm also the same way in that w/ many mass market paperbacks/spy novels/crime novels, i can totally re-read years later and maybe remember some minor details but be completely surprised by the ending.

finally, i attribute it in part to my mother being a librarian, me being an only child, and reading a massive amount of books starting at a very young age. i think the more reading you do when you're younger, the faster you end up reading later in life. not a proven theory, just my thought.

I read pretty slowly for someone who reads often. I find it very difficult to read just one line at a time. I generally read 4 to 6 lines simultaneously, not by choice, get confused and need to re-read a paragraph here and there. It's not so bad most of the time, but when the sequence of events is critical, it can be a real pain. It is actually a beneficial way to read physics texts though. You read an equation, an explanation of an equation and look at a figure illustrating the principle of the equation all at the same time. Plus, in physics, you generally are only covering about 100-200 pages per week in all classes combined, so speed isn't the issue.

Reading is not racing.

I used to devour fiction (when I was in my teens). Nowadays I seldom read fiction; my two exceptions are: while traveling and when I need a couple of evenings' break.

My choice for traveling? Really big books by popular authors that will last the trip.

For diversion? Authors I really want to read.

I get my traveling books from the town dump (book exchange) and my study of particular authors from the town library. I'm reading Graham Greene now, and I can't imagine trying to speed read him. I could, but why would I? His words are oh-so-economical and he paints pictures with his prose. One could read Greene for the story-line, but one would miss so much.

As Raymond Chandler wrote (in defense) of Dashiel Hammet, "He wrote scenes that seemed never to have been written before". Gee, if you don't stop to picture scenes in your mind, you miss a lot.

I'll chime in here with a me-too on all points (except that for some damn reason either my parents or my private school found it a good idea to have me take a speed-reading class...)

I think it has negatively impacted my typing skills though - I constantly swap letters, almost always in the same words. Of course, this could be due to my generally mild dyslexia, but I think it's gotten worse as I've aged. OTOH, I am in a job with a LOT more typing now.

I think Ryan had a point: I am a fast reader and a terrible auditory learner. I can read and memorize visuals quickly but have a hard time with audio and can't manage to concentrate on, say, classical music to save my life.

My speed reading is apparently attributable by not bothering to read entire words; I'll either process big blocks of text in chunks, or skip the second half of a word if I already know what the word is (or think I do, based on context).

I seem to apply similar filtering to the web -- I honestly don't even see ads on pages that have them -- my eyes (and mind) just don't pay any attention.

I suspect that reading rate is an inherited ability just like dyslexia seems to be. As far as I can tell there are no good studies on rapid reading rates (or eulexia to coin a word) because no one is adversely effected by it. In my family you are either a fast reader or have dyslexia, no one seems to be in the middle.

I was reading well in the first grade but I was also reading at a fast rate then too. In fact, I was usually so far ahead while the teacher was going from one student to the next having each of us read a paragraph at a time that I was always unable to find the correct passage. As a result I was placed in the back of the room (right next to the bookshelf so I could read more books) so I wouldn't embarrass myself by having to read. I was punished by the teacher when she caught me reading and told to read at the "normal" rate of the class.

It is a handy talent to have if you are in an academic or professional field but it does lead to reading addiction. I have been a book a day (usually novels or history) reader all of my life and have the thousands of books to prove it. I will read anything, including the box of roach tablets next to the toilet if nothing else is available. I read a page or two on the elevator going from one floor to another. And I can't re-read a book because it is too familiar. Thank God for www.abebooks.com

"he reason why some people read so fast and others cannot is that the latter learned how to read by actually "speaking" the words to what they are reading in their minds, as if they were reading out loud."

My wife claims that she lost the ability to speed-read after too much reading aloud to small children. So I think she regressed from taking in chunks of text directly to forming the spoken form of each word in her mind.

I'm one of the fast fiction readers. I started reading very early and have read thousands of books. For me, reading is like watching a movie. So, I will find myself skipping a lot of stuff to fit into that paradigm. Yes, they are in the woods. The woods are dark. Why do I need three paragraphs discussing that? SKIP Meanwhile I can see each of the characters in my mind and what they are doing in each scene.

One of the downsides? is that I find I can read without paying any attention whatsoever. I suppose that it comes from reading and excluding things I find extraneous. For example, in reading these comments I found that I would have to go back a re-read a comment because while I was reading it the first time I was thinking about my reaction to the last comment.

Finally, I paid attention to my eye movement while I was reading the comments and noticed quite a bit of side to side movement. It was as if my eyes were skipping forward a bit to pick up clues for how to proceed then skipping back and reading a bit more then looking back a bit to remind myself of what I'd already read. I'm not sure exactly what my mind was doing there but I'm sure it was fascinating.

I too have many of the characteristics you describe. I love re-reading, but I do remember virtually every aspect of every book I read (except names - which I am suspicious that I may not be reading at all, simply using them as I.D. tags for the mental movie).

However, I also like poetic / writerly texts sometimes, even though it requires me to consciously slow down a great deal. Something like Gene Wolfe, etc.

I also love hearing stories read aloud - I suspect I pick up a whole lot of descriptions I would have skimmed for "important information" otherwise. Incidentally, I never much liked Tolkien's works until I listened the un-abridged LoTR read aloud - it was a remarkably different experience.

I spead-read somewhat, but I have to look at every word in order to comprehend meaning. OTOH, I can scan entire pages in search of particular keywords (or merely words that look interesting) with no comprehension at all, but stop and read carefully when I find something. Incidentally, this skill becomes invaluable when trying to identify the meat in a patent.

I had a college professor who could read entire pages in just a few seconds. He had formal training, and he said what they did was to read many pages of text that comrpised a column of single words. Then, each line was increased to two words for a while, then three, etc. After finishing the course, he could read an entire page with full comprehension by simply scanning it down the middle.

I can read very fast when I want to, and understand what I am reading. However, if I am reading something, I tend to like to think about it as I go. I cannot think deeply about what I am reading and do so quickly at the same time.

I didn't realize reading = skipping. Does that mean that the fastest readers are those who read the least? ;-)

When I was young and paperbacks cost 25 cents I used to read fast and finish one in an evening. Now that they cost $7.50 I take my time, I savor every phrase, I ponder character development and marvel at the typography. If the story line is really gripping I lapse into spped reading. I read the first chapter and the last chapter. Then I take a liesurely stroll thru the pages to see how things got from point A to point B.

I don't read "non-fiction" any more. I've lived long enough to realize that, no matter what the topic, "Non-fiction" always turns into fiction.
We live in that marvelous age in which every thing we know is soon outdated, revised, extended or ridiculed.

A computer age skill I have developed is reading while scrolling on the computer screen. I find if I do it too much, I'll get a mild headache.

My mind is addicted to information and God bless the internets! It's my meth. I love reading so much I decided young not to have children because it would interfere with my reading time. (That's not the only reason but a factor nonetheless.)

My degree is in English lit, but I haven't really prioritized reading fiction since graduating. I really appreciate an author with an engaging writing style and original ideas and beautiful expression. They are sadly rare nowadays. British authors usually rate higher on this standard, to me.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, I like blogs and comboxes because it's just so unvarnished.

I had to slog through a lot of intense academic reading before and avoid it when I can! Blechh.

My attention span for any particular topic has shortened a lot since accelerating my information mindsuck rate using the internets. There's no way I'll get my PhD. The dissertation would kill me.

I read fiction and magazines quickly (800 wpm or more), and I definitely don't vocalize. I find that I must vocalize to appreciate poetry and to edit my own writing. My prose (I've written a couple of hundred magazine articles) is much stronger when I take the time to read it aloud on the last pass or two through the word processor. Alternatively, I rarely bother to do this on e-mail and forum responses, and I frequently find annoying errors because my proof pass through my own typing was too quick.

I too skim a lot of fiction, although I've noticed I pay closer attention as I age and my eyes get bad.

I suppose the technique of taking in a lot of words at once is a superset of the way most people recognize individual words. They take in the first and last letters and the mind fills in the blanks. That, and context, is why we can accommodate some truly puzzling misspellings.

I wonder if this works the same for ideographic languages like Japanese once one recognizes enough Kanji at a glance?