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I have to defend speed reading. It is in fact highly useful, and I will claim that it can even aid comprehension. I have two examples. (1) Last night I went t

by mbrock 13y ago

I have to defend speed reading. It is in fact highly useful, and I will claim that it can even aid comprehension. I have two examples. (1) Last night I went to a meetup to discuss a certain topic related to religion, atheism, and a certain idea explained by Alain de Botton. So I decided to check out his book about it. I grabbed my notebook, bought the book on Kindle, and skimmed it in 30 minutes, making notes of what struck me as interesting fodder for discussion. It's a pretty short and breezy book, so this was quite enjoyable. Then I realized that Erich Fromm probably has something to say about this, so I googled a bit and found that he wrote a book about "Religion and Psychoanalysis," which seemed highly relevant from the preview. So I did the same thing with that. Before the event I had dinner while looking through my notes and thinking about it. This all enabled me to be decently prepared, get a good start on the material, bring some quotes to the table, and so on. (2) I do a weekly blog series about museum visits, for fun and to practice my writing. Sometimes I'm pretty clueless about the topic at hand, so in order to keep the blog from becoming totally vague and uninteresting, I skim a book or two. This lets me engage with the museum stuff in a more interesting way. For example last weekend I skimmed Deleuze's book about Francis Bacon, and found a couple of great ideas to build on. So why would I say that speed reading can aid comprehension? Basically, books are tedious. I mean, how many books do you own that you haven't gotten through or even started? Speed reading, especially in combination with note taking, is a way to start engaging with material without investing a huge amount of time and attention, which are extremely scarce resources for a full time worker. Maybe I'm just saying it's better than nothing. But I also really feel like the sheer velocity of speed reading or skimming helps me somehow. I don't get stuck as easily. I don't feel the obsessive need to "grok" everything. I don't get bogged down. Of course this is a staple technique for people in academia, and you don't really need any special tools for it. E-book highlighting can be very useful, but manual note taking works great too.

jeremysmyth 13y ago
See, this is the first realistic comment I've seen that matches my idea of "speed reading". The OP, other articles in the last few days, and several comments seem to rest on a misunderstanding of the term "speed reading". It is not the same as "reading faster", nor is it a method of inhaling the same amount of content in a shorter time. It is, instead, a means of grabbing the key points of a large document in a short space of time, either before studying it properly (so you know its structure and end result), or after studying it properly (so you can quickly remind yourself of the main points). Semantic arguments are the boringest arguments.
- mbrock 13y ago
  Exactly! Phillip Lopate has a short chapter on "research" in "To Show and to Tell," and describes his way of researching like this: "Here the creative nonfiction writer can follow the journalists' lead. Being trained generalists—that is to say, quick studies who can leap opportunistically on intriguing vignettes and facts, give them a vivid twist, and forget the rest—veteran journalists know that they don't have to become specialists, they just have to absorb enough of the material under scrutiny this week or month to file an interesting story. When you are researching, what you are looking for, subconsciously or not, is the oddity that will spark your imagination—not necessarily the most important detail, but the one that will excite your love of paradox or sense of humor." This kind of "opportunistic" reading is discredited throughout this HN thread as "not real reading." I get the point—it's not the same as reading carefully, reverently, leisurely. It's a workaday tactic, it's somewhat impious. But for me it's a wonderful and even liberating way to work with texts.

by mbrock 13y ago

jeremysmyth 13y ago

See, this is the first realistic comment I've seen that matches my idea of "speed reading". The OP, other articles in the last few days, and several comments seem to rest on a misunderstanding of the term "speed reading". It is not the same as "reading faster", nor is it a method of inhaling the same amount of content in a shorter time. It is, instead, a means of grabbing the key points of a large document in a short space of time, either before studying it properly (so you know its structure and end result), or after studying it properly (so you can quickly remind yourself of the main points). Semantic arguments are the boringest arguments.

mbrock 13y ago
Exactly! Phillip Lopate has a short chapter on "research" in "To Show and to Tell," and describes his way of researching like this: "Here the creative nonfiction writer can follow the journalists' lead. Being trained generalists—that is to say, quick studies who can leap opportunistically on intriguing vignettes and facts, give them a vivid twist, and forget the rest—veteran journalists know that they don't have to become specialists, they just have to absorb enough of the material under scrutiny this week or month to file an interesting story. When you are researching, what you are looking for, subconsciously or not, is the oddity that will spark your imagination—not necessarily the most important detail, but the one that will excite your love of paradox or sense of humor." This kind of "opportunistic" reading is discredited throughout this HN thread as "not real reading." I get the point—it's not the same as reading carefully, reverently, leisurely. It's a workaday tactic, it's somewhat impious. But for me it's a wonderful and even liberating way to work with texts.