How to read books fast and get the most out of what you read?
Measuring the reading speed
Many of us have a list of books that we would like to read before the end of the year.
tips for developing speed reading
It will take several months to learn to read faster. And to understand what the book is about, it is enough to apply the method described in our blog: measure your speed, evaluate the volume and structure of the text – and read only the necessary part of it.
Training steps
First: Count the number of characters
Fast Read is best suited for non-fiction literature, primarily because its authors often follow the same narrative framework.
Next: divide this number by two
The introduction is necessary to keep you interested and to get you to read the entire chapter. Therefore, it can be skipped and limited to the last paragraph, which contains the main point.
Then: count the number of lines you read in a minute.
It is usually followed by chapters, divided into semantic fragments: at the beginning of each of them it is said what the author wants to share with you, and then there is information confirming this idea.
Finally: Get your average reading speed in characters
Examples, illustrations and clarifications, if you are in a hurry, you can skip. The conclusion of each chapter in good nonfiction is a summary, a summary, and a reminder of what you just read.
Determine the purpose of reading
It will help you understand how deep immersion in the text you need: will the superficial reading described above suffice, or will you have to grasp every word.
Check out the table of contents
Evaluate how clearly the author’s thoughts are structured and select the chapters needed to achieve your goal. But keep in mind that it may change after you turn a few pages!
Break chapters into blocks
Set a clear time frame that you must meet as you read each chapter. Taking into account your reading speed (we have already measured it above), estimate how much of the chapter you have time to read.
But what about fiction?
We strongly recommend using our “barbaric method” only if you need to quickly understand what the book is about. It is not suitable for permanent use, not only because works of art are structured differently than non-fiction.
Kristy Purple
Blog Author