Customer Reviews

How to Read Better and Faster

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Books by Norman Lewis are still bought avidly by English book readers even on the streets of India but are not very popular in America. The basic speed reading strategies are not that many and are not that difficult to master. For some unknown reason, it is not even offered as a class in most high schools and colleges! Imagine all the hours you will save if you could finish your required reading in half the time or less?

In 1989, I was preparing to take the GRE test to come to America and was intimidated by all the reading material I had to go through in order to prepare for the test. Then, as I was passing one of those street sellers that are such a common sight in India, I saw a copy of this book and the title caught my attention. I decided to make this my first book to read so I could finish the rest of the books faster. The strategy paid off and I increased my reading speed from 100 words per minute to over 2000 words per minute in less than 6 months! In the process, my engineering grades picked up as I was not only reading faster but also retaining complex material better. Needless to say, I did fantastic on my test scores and came to America to attend graduate school in 1991.

The basis behind the author's theory is that speed reading, high concentration and material retention are all linked. You can't do one without the other very effectively. So, if you start reading fast, you are forced to concentrate and this increases retention. The high concentration that is induced when you try to read faster results in some interesting physiological changes in the brain where the memory of what you are reading gets etched more permanently than the times when you don't have high concentration. This is not explained in the book, but I came to that conclusion after I became curious about what makes the book's techniques so effective and researched deeper into the subject. I don't want to go too much into the book's techniques because I think they are more effective if you read them directly from the book for the first time.

Since then, I have purchased several other books on speed reading but I still find this to be the best book on the subject. My perception may be skewed because I had already increased my reading speed to the physical limits of how fast my eyes could move. But the reason I like this book is because Norman Lewis does not make any ridiculous claims and his methods are very simple, common-sense techniques that are easy to follow. In some of the other books, I found a few of the techniques to be so silly that I never even tried them.

People who meet me and eventually learn about my reading speed always ask me how I was able to make such a dramatic change. When I tell them about this book, they try finding it at the local bookstore and are never able to find it! So, I end up parting with my copy and picking up a new one the next time I visit India. I am glad that one can find this book on Amazon.com now. I can tell my friends to get a copy from here.

Your reading speed tends to drop over time if you don't relearn these techniques once every few years. Of course, people with glasses will see results that are less dramatic than people without glasses due to the restriction in their field of vision. But everyone benefits from these solid, proven techniques. I hope you enjoy this book as much as I did and recommend it to your friends that are interested in sharpening their brains.

This is the most useful book on speed-reading I've found so far. It goes from the goals of reading (getting the main idea, getting specific details, overall perception) to specific techniques that help achieving those goals. This "goal - technique" approach is supported by numerous exercises. I find this approach much more useful and productive than blind acquisition of techniques with the broad ill-defined goal of reading faster that other speed-reading books (at least the ones I've run into) seem to concentrate on.

This book offers techniques that I will continue to use. I wish I knew about this book during undergraduate and graduate school. I did manage without this book but I believe I would have benefited exponentially having the material. This is a must buy. When you purchase this book, make sure you allot daily time and focus on working to read better and faster.

My daughter completed this book during her 8th grade school year. She went from reading 150 wpm to reading around 725 wpm with impressive improvement in comprehension. I highly recommend this book to any student but especially to a student struggling with reading speed and comprehension.

There are other speed reading books, but to me this is the definitive book that will help anyone improve their reading and comprehension skills. Normal Lewis, does a fantastic job of making the reading go through tons of reading exercises to improve the skill step by step. I strongly recommend reading this book, if you really want to improve your reading speed.