As someone with horrible reading speed, the demo on their home page worked pretty well. I'd like to see a demo with some more advanced text. Marketing language is pretty easy to digest quickly. I'd like to see a selection from Gödel, Escher, & Bach or something to see how well I could comprehend more dense texts.
It's been awhile since I've really looked into anything speed-reading related, but as far as I recall, there aren't that many good techniques for speed-reading something like Godel Escher Bach, because the bottleneck for comprehension for really dense or deep texts is usually time taken to think about it. When I'm reading some like GEB, I usually end up reading it slowly, then stopping and thinking about it even after I've pretty carefully read it. Then I reread it again :)
Conversely, a lot of fiction, especially fiction on the lighter side, tends to repeat itself, or provide more narrative clues as to what's going on, so you can usually pick up what you missed in the context.
Of course, that's a really high level recollection of something I'm not an expert in :P
I also might just be trying to convince myself that I'm not a slow reader, heh
If anyone has any research or info to the contrary, I'd love to hear about it, because I'd definitely like to be able to absorb meaningful/dense information more quickly, even if it were just a small percent increase.
I'd also really like to see some third party research/tests with stuff like this and spreeder
the big thing when speed reading is to read it, just read it. Your brain will churn on it. Then come back and read it again. Your brain will churn more. Make notations in the margin the whole time. Now finally read it again. You'll get it all done faster than one read through and your brain will churn a ton on it. It's like when you come back to code tutorials a few days later after some practice and know what's going on a bit more and get further.
Then go back and read your notations (just put ticks or dots by the stuff that's important in the margins). And now you understand it and you can summarize it in the notes. And this cements the learning.
Of course this is a lot of work. I'd rather slam it once, brain index it and maybe come back if I care.
I've never been able to get the hang of speed reading (I think I lack the knack for skimming), but I listen to a lot of audiobooks, and have a similar procedure for dense sections. Even when I'm distracted and prone to zoning out, I always get essentially 100% comprehension because I just rewind back to the last part that I remember well. In fact, it seems I still pick up something when I'm zoned out, because I'll remember little aspects of the section on the re-read. So just blasting through does seem to lower the cognitive load of a re-read, even if your comprehension the first time around is very low or seemingly non-existent.
So another thing to note is sometimes what you are zoning out on isn't important so if you still get what's going on don't skip back. You can do the same thing going forward in a binary search type pattern. Works really well for stuff like Tolkien or Mellville whe're they're off on a tangent describing the sea or the somthings of somewhere and how onrey they are.
I can understand this; I think it depends on what your trying to get out of the book. There are some books I read (for example, I'm reading Stranger in a Strange Land) where I like the book well enough, but I'm not particularly into the prose and/or writing style, so I'm okay missing some things here and there.
I think that happens to me when I do "decompressing," where I'm reading a book to unwind my brain after having read nothing but papers or technical books for a few weeks.
Other times I'm just in the mood to sit down and really experience what the book has to offer. When I'm in that mood, I don't want to sacrifice really taking the time to let a book evoke imagery and mood, in the name of speed. I guess some folks can get that reading a lot faster, but I can't right now.
Hah! I just finished Stranger in a Strange Land this weekend :)
It was my introduction to Heinlein. I'd avoided older scifi because I'd wondered whether I would relate to it, and felt confirmed in that suspicion with Stranger. It's not that I'm not glad that I read it, and if I consider the context that it was written in circa the 1950s, then I can definitely appreciate how radical it must have been. But to my sensibilities, it feels tawdry and cheap, and thus insincere. It's in no way a fair criticism since it seems to have been part of the zeitgeist that led to the free love of the 60s and subsequent over-indulgence and exploitation of the 70s (and thus the dominance of the idea that sex sells and so on). And from what I gather it was rather sincere in so far as Heinlein was supremely interested in challenging prevailing mores of the time. But outside of that context, to me, it feels, again, cheap and tawdry, and just kind of stale.
No, I completely relate. I feel the same way reading it, and like you said, it's not fair, but that doesn't really take away my general feeling about it.
It's the kind of book where I think I can intellectually appreciate it's contribution and what it was in the context it was born out of, but I'm not really super interested in reading more like it.
