The Art of Rapid Reading by Walter B. Pitkin

Readlax: Speed Reading Training! (promo)

Book Review and Quotes:

"Read Wholes, Not Parts. Read Sentences, Not Words. Read for the Broadest Meaning First, Then for Details Later if Necessary."

"Reading is a Mode of Learning. It Should, Therefore, Follow The Laws of Learning."

"What factors play in upon your act and the reading which ensues? They group as follows:
1) The interest that lead you to read the book
2) The habits of body and mind that you use in the act of reading
3) The momentary conditions under which your interests and habits of reading operate. These momentary conditions fall into three important rough classes:
a) Conditions of your surroundings
b) Conditions of your physique, and
c) Conditions of your mind"

"The Better Your Vocabulary, the Better You Will Read. But a Good Vocabulary Does Not Consist Merely of the Set of Words. It Includes Also the Many Various Shades of Meaning These Words Carry in Special Contexts.
Many readers fool themselves about their vocabulary. They think they know, let us say, 40,000 words. But in reality, they only know about one-fifth of each of these words; that is, they know some one meaning of each.
A big vocabulary is not nearly so useful as a moderate one thoroughly understood.
It 's Much More Useful to Know All the Important Meaning of 15,000 Words than to Know Only One Meaning of Each of 50,000 Words.
Mastery of a Little is Better Than Shallow Knowledge of Much."

"Of the two wrong ways to read, namely reading word by word and skimming, the latter is by far the better. It is closer to nature."

"Word reading is the habit of looking at each individual word and dwelling too intently upon its own separate meaning. This is likely to result from one of two tendencies: either some childhood difficulty at the time when one learned to read else, in adult years, to the habit of reading very technical, hard work calling for the closest concentration. "

"A normal adult eye takes in four of five ordinary words at a glance. The finest eye in the world cannot take in more than seven. And the worst eye takes in only one"

"The Listening Reader. There is another type of reader which seems to be very common. He understands words by remembering their sounds. Psychologists believe that he is considerably slower in his reading that the visualizer and much faster than the silent talker. Many people read in this manner by nature."

"The Silent Talker. It is something of a misfortune that most of us, as little children, learn to read at about the same time that we learn to talk. Because we are learning these two main language functions during the same primitive years, we tend to link them. reading becomes a variety of talking to ourselves; and as talking is vastly slower than eye reading, it retards greatly the reading process."

"The Eye Reader. The fastest of all readers is the man who reads wholly or almost wholly with his eyes and never has to complete the pronouncing of any words or phrases. Many psychologists insist that he uses his throat and tongue just as the silent reader and the talking reader do. Perhaps de does. But he uses them in a muscular shorthand. Faint and very rapid motor reactions of the larynx are all that he needs. We have excellent proof of this in the fact that many skilled eye readers can read and assimilate material from three to five times as fast as anybody can talk it."

"What to Read. Books are wonderful in making magic and yet a very real environment. Those who speak to us through them are more intimate and have more influence over us than our living companions"

"Keep in mind that it is much harder to skim through ten articles of 1,000 words each than through one article of 10,000 words. Each change of subject compels you to readjust mentally, to work with a fresh set of meaning, hence to warm up to the job."

"Keep in mind, too, that familiar topics may be skimmed far faster than strange ones."

More articles and book reviews:
Brain Fitness: The Easy Way of Keeping Your Mind Sharp Through Qigong
Reading in the Brain: The Science and Evolution of a Human Invention