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How fast can everyone read? Not really words per minute wise, but maybe books since they are a familar base. For example, I can read Farenheit 451 in 2-3 weeks. That factors in school,free-time..etc. I'm a very slow reader and am worried because I still have alot of summer reading left and I have about a month left to read 2 five hundred page books. Is it possible? Can I pull it off? Anyone have any stories of their own 'reading feats' to motivate me?
Thanks for your help guys.

By Duke3d4 (Duke3d4) on Friday, July 09, 2004 - 09:15 pm: Edit

I can finish a novel in a 3 hours usually. One of those high school 200-400 page novels.

Speedreading I can do and read but I hardly retain any information except the gist of it, so I rarely speedread. But if I TRIED REAL HARD and just focused on getting the gist of it, I can probably read a novel in 10 minutes. The thing is to focus on important nouns/verbs and reading sentences as one.


I can usually finish a High school textbook of 700-1000 pages in about a week if I really tried, but usually I got other stuff so it takes me 2 weeks.

I'm a pretty fast reader but the thing is, slow readers read words at a time. Normal people read two or three words at a time. The fast readers read SENTENCES at a time. That is what you have to change, start trying to read sentences as words instead of just going one word to the next.

By Crazylicious (Crazylicious) on Saturday, July 10, 2004 - 12:32 am: Edit

i read fast. always have... good books = me stuck to that book until i'm finished, no matter the consequences. well... if there's school etc, i MAY space out the reading of the books. when i read those good books during summer... i can't talk to anybody... only get up to go to the bathroom, it's really bad.

i hate good books when I have other things I am required to do because the good books are huge temptations and occupy my time... haha

i.e.
angels and demons: 11:30pm to: 3-4am

i read sentences at a time and can pretty much remember the details of the story... except for like the harry potter books cuz some of the details tend to all mesh together... i don't remember if its from book 3 or 4, etc.

speedreading: 10minutes? maybe if i'm just reviewing the book that i already read. heh... i would not want to ruin the book by just simply scanning it for key phrases... unless i hated the book

sorry of the unscholarlyness of this post... (too much periods, lowercase, etc) - but just writing in a hurry. haha

By Ucbhopeful (Ucbhopeful) on Saturday, July 10, 2004 - 12:49 am: Edit

who cares if you read fast? depends how much you can absorb the information in a given amount of time...sure you can read fast, but do you understand ALL OF THE MATERIAL? do you grasp certain concepts? that is certainly better than speed reading.

By Crazylicious (Crazylicious) on Saturday, July 10, 2004 - 01:04 am: Edit

Well I read fast not because I necessarily want to read fast, but because the book is so engrossing that I just want to keep reading. I'm always depressed when a good book ends!

I can definitely understand the material and if I don't, I re-read that particular part. I also make predictions as to what's going to happen; and most of the time I'm right. i.e., I figure out what they should do or the answer to something a lot of pages before the main characters do... it makes me laugh, esp. if it's a favorite author.
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For school textbooks, I don't read as fast as I do for leisure novels. But I read as fast as I can, while absorbing all the info (and re-reading if I don't). I have a semi-photographic memory as well so that helps a lot.

By Titanz05 (Titanz05) on Sunday, July 11, 2004 - 03:30 pm: Edit

bump