Reading, Riting and Rithmatic

Kyle recently blogged about something both he and have in common. No, not the Minnesota Vikings, not the Utah Jazz,........slow reading and the lure of that magical box displaying moving pictures.

I've always considered myself a slow reader. It seemingly takes me forever to get through a book and it annoys the heck out of me. I always thought it's because I like to read books that offer a lot of visual content. I always wanted to perfectly visualize the situations the characters I was reading about were in. If any of you had been in our house in Tucson and noticed the collection of books on our bookshelf, you would have known that at one point in my life I was into reading Anne Rice books. Yep, I read all of the vampire novels she wrote. There was just something I found so appealing about the way she wrote. Very visual descriptions. It put in the room so well. The subject matter also appealed to me very much which was probably why I was able to get through the 10 or so books.

But I've found that it isn't the visualization that keeps my reading speeds low, it's my reading style. I, like most people I presume, read a word at a time and basically recite the word to myself in my head. This is the most inefficient way to read. Kind of like the hunt-and-peck method for typing. Slow as molasses.

So after reading Kyle's post, I decided to start exploring ways to improve my reading speed. I came upon this site which offered a test to determine what your current speed and comprehension rates are. I found that I read 200wpm with a comprehension rate of 82%. So I read slowly but absorb a good majority of it. Not too bad, but I want it to improve.

My hopes are that I will be able to improve my reading speed and, therefore, be more excited to pick up a book because it won't take me three months to get through it. And I think that might be true for others like me and Kyle. I hope speeding things up will decrease the effect that a shortened attention span would have on our reading. So, anyone have any resources or ideas for us to improve our reading?