there was a good piece here a while ago that got me speed reading effectively. your brain can understand things much faster, the holdup is the input stream of your eyes. trick is to make them faster.
the basic gist of it is this: instead of focusing with your eyes on the start of every line and reading to the end, try and start indented in and read the first word with your peripheral vision. end the line on the second to last word in the same way. as you get good, you progress with this technique.
it does truly work, just using the basics of it speed up read time for me substantially.
however, it makes it hard to use your imagination, so if you're reading for enjoyment, don't do this.
To extend the gist, speed-reading is more or less about reading sentences like words and paragraphs like sentences. The trick is figuring how you can read beyond your rate of comprehension, and actually forcing your eyes line-by-line faster than you can vocalize each thought.
the basic gist of it is this: instead of focusing with your eyes on the start of every line and reading to the end, try and start indented in and read the first word with your peripheral vision. end the line on the second to last word in the same way. as you get good, you progress with this technique.
it does truly work, just using the basics of it speed up read time for me substantially.
however, it makes it hard to use your imagination, so if you're reading for enjoyment, don't do this.