Speed reading is all about reading as fast as you can, and it's a suprisingly easy technique
to learn.
You can teach yourself speed reading with a webapp like Spreeder, but speed reading
is based on a few key techniques that anyone can pick up:
Stop saying the words in your head: Subvocalization is the habit most of us have where we "hear"
words in our minds as we read them.
Breaking that habit can dramatically increase reading speed.
All you need to do is disengage the speech mechanism in your brain, which means chewing
gum, humming, or even eating while you're reading.
Another method is to repeat "A-E-I-O-U" as you read to teach yourself to stop reading
with your mouth.
Avoid "Back Skips": When we're reading we tend to skip our eyes back and dwell on the
word we just read.
This slows us down.
Unfortunately, the only way to break this habit is to admit you do it and notice when
you do.
Point at the text: One of the more surprising speed
reading techniques is "meta guiding."
This simply means pointing at the text as you read it.
You still need to concentrate on each word if you want
to actually retain any information, but it's one way speed reading programs teach you to
quickly get through a text.
Speed reading isn't for everyone, and while some people can certainly retain a lot of
the information they read, many people can't.
So, if you're interested, give speed reading a try, but don't feel like you have to commit
to it just to get through all your books.
You have other options.
Another trick often associated with speed reading is skimming the text.
As former British Prime Minister Arthur James Balfour once said, "He has only half learned
the art of
reading who has not added to it the more refined art of skipping and skimming."
Skimming is one of method of speed reading, and while it's not great for comprehension
(don't do this in your college textbooks), it's a good way to quickly get through your
backlog of books.
This works especially
well for non-fiction when you might not be interested in certain parts of a book.
Professor David Davis shares his strategy for effective skimming:
Begin with the introduction or preface.
Read it carefully to find
the main argument, strategy, and claims.
Read the final chapter or conclusion.
Finally, go through each chapter and read the introductory paragraph and the final paragraph.
Obviously you
don't want to do this for every single book you're trying to get through, but
it's an effective strategy for topics you're mildly interested in.
Of course, if a few chapters sound more interesting than others, you can pop in and
read just those ones.
Skimming works especially well for history books, essay collections, memoirs, or current
interest books.