How fast do you read?

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student12x

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I'm curious. How many pages can you read in a minute? Just give a guesstimate. Btw, also list your major.
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this would depend on what im reading...I can read a novel much faster than I can read Gray's Anatomy.

You'd think there would be an online test or something for this kind of thing...
 
Depends.
If I'm plowing through literature/something I WANT to read (I'm a huge classic literature freak/avant garde Nobel Prize in Lit winning freak), I can get through it realllyyyy fast.

If it's "Organic Chemistry" or "The cell". It usually takes me about an hour to get through 10ish pages, since I fall asleep for about 40 minutes.
 
I don't know how fast I can read in words/minute, but I read novels pretty fast. I usually read almost line by line.... meaning I pretty much glance at a line and catch about everything that it says, move the next line and so on. I don't generally focus on the words themselves, but rather get picked up in the story and so it moves pretty fast.

Reading textbooks is entirely different matter. Generally I have to read one sentence three times before it sticks.... probably more due to difficulty concentrating than anything else. It doesn't grasp my attention like a novel does and so reading is a problem.
 
Jolie South said:
yea, how big are the pages? what font size? what type of material?
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Personally I keep the 15th Edition of Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine as light reading for the crapper. 4 point font on rice paper and 3.5 inches thick. It takes about 20 minutes to read cover to cover.
 
I keep Gray's on my nightstand. I haven't picked it up in weeks. I'm still on the skeletal system ... informative but I've been playing video games lately instead...oops. 😛
 
Typical textbook I read about 10-40 pages per hour if I'm taking notes and processing the info.
 
I actually read REALLY slow and considered using it as one of my weaknesses for my interview. I don't know what it is, but I just read slow. Getting glasses this past year helped a lot due to my astigmatism, but I still haven't caught up to normal reading speeds.
 
Quix said:
Personally I keep the 15th Edition of Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine as light reading for the crapper. 4 point font on rice paper and 3.5 inches thick. It takes about 20 minutes to read cover to cover.
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That's all you got? I can drive and read Harrison's at the same time. Try reading Greenspan's Endocrinology and then see how long you stay in the john.
 
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If only this thread were around when people were asking for the definition of "gunner".
 
Depends what it is. I read voraciously as a kid and as a byproduct I read quite rapidly now.

For light reading (novels/fiction/no critical thinking required) 100 pages/hour. Timed with a Hardy Boys book three years ago.
For a textbook that I'm interested in and requires critical thinking, or a textbook that I'm not interested in but doesn't required critical thinking, about 40 pages an hour.
For a textbook that I'm not interested in and requires critical thinking, 20 pages an hour max.

Psych major.
 
I can read most English fiction pretty quick. Dense science stuff takes a little longer to process. If we are talking english fiction though, probably about 15 seconds a page max. German fiction, if not Goethe or something, about 45 seconds a page. That is my grasping speed. I can read faster but not much sticks.

I'm an exceptionally fast reader. Just one of those things that happened. I had a college reading level by 2nd grade. Then I got dumb and it never really changed after that....I got tired of kids making fun of me so I started up sports. Sad, but true.
 
Has anyone here successfully increased their reading speed and kept up with comprehension? Especially when reading science texts? I've had some friends mention some programs online they've used to increase their speed a little, haven't really looked into it much.

I consider myself a fairly slow reader and it's pretty annoying at times when I feel like I'm just dragging through a chapter.
 
I dont know if there are really proven methods to increase the speed you read but there are certain people with great facility at this. They say that President Kennedy could read 2000 words a minute. I would say for myself and the people I know who read quickly they dont read as if they were an audiobook. That is in their head they are not hearing the words as they are reading. I think the poster above who mentioned reading almost line by line is my technique and I go about 100-150 pages an hour in a history book/fiction. Science obviously takes a lot more time since it is rarely written in narrative form. I was a history major.
 
Very fast... like Salsa45, I read a lot as a kid (a book a night), and based on my unscientific tests, I read about 3x faster than most people. Made the MCAT a little easier. nlax30, my friend is going to try to learn how to read faster this summer, so I'll let you know how that turns out...
 
I have always read a lot, and I've always read fast. I started reading fairly large books when I was pretty young--I read 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea when I was in 4th grade. I can read a pretty large novel (800-1000 pages) in a day, sometimes a day and a half if I am not into it. As another poster already mentioned, I kind of get caught up in the story and don't really read the words.
 
How do you learn to read faster?
 
try the Demo for eyeQ online. It's pretty amazing. My reading speed was around 250 words per minute. After a 10 minute eye exercise it jumped to over 350 words per minute. It's essentially a workout for your eye muscles. My eyes felt like they were gliding after the exercises.
 
metalmd06 said:
try the Demo for eyeQ online. It's pretty amazing. My reading speed was around 250 words per minute. After a 10 minute eye exercise it jumped to over 350 words per minute. It's essentially a workout for your eye muscles. My eyes felt like they were gliding after the exercises.
Click to expand...

OHT GOGD I JUSTT TIOED IT ACD NOOW I CANY SEE!
 
Cegar said:
OHT GOGD I JUSTT TIOED IT ACD NOOW I CANY SEE!
Click to expand...

Seriously man, it's really pretty amazing and its pretty straightforward how it works. Give it a try. I double dog dare you. If your eyeballs fall out, then you can shadow the opthamologist after he pops them back in.
 
metalmd06 said:
Seriously man, it's really pretty amazing and its pretty straightforward how it works. Give it a try. I double dog dare you. If your eyeballs fall out, then you can shadow the opthamologist after he pops them back in.
Click to expand...

Oh, yeah. I'm not really going to bother with hoaky internet eye exercises.

I just thought that was a funny post to make.

And it was.
 
Well it's a good thing you can sit in front of your home computer and hear your own laughter. Or do you play laughter sound effects when you make a funny?
 
metalmd06 said:
Well it's a good thing you can sit in front of your home computer and hear your own laughter. Or do you play laughter sound effects when you make a funny?
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I just say, "That's so funny."
 
Cegar may think its hokey, but for any of you that want to try it, go here:

http://www.eyeq.tv/?cid=130202

I just tried it again and went from 339p/m to 443 p/m. I'm not sure I would ever buy it, but it might be helpful to some. One other thing, one of you guys mentioned reading without hearing the words in your head. How the hell do you do that? I think for those of us who do read "aloud" internally it would be a tough habit to break. Any tips?

If any of you actually try this demo, I'd like to know what your results are, for curiousity's sake.
 
3 nature letters articles / hour
 
Quix said:
Personally I keep the 15th Edition of Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine as light reading for the crapper. 4 point font on rice paper and 3.5 inches thick. It takes about 20 minutes to read cover to cover.
Click to expand...

:laugh: You beat me! The first time through took me 38 minutes, now I have it down to about 23 minutes each time cover to cover. 😉
 
littlealex said:
Typical textbook I read about 10-40 pages per hour if I'm taking notes and processing the info.
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That sounds about right for me to. Probably 10-25 pages an hour while high-liting and taking notes. Of course if I zone out and start thinking about random things (who's that cute woman that just walked into the library?), my pace gets even slooooowwwwwweeeerrrrrr. 😎
 
www.spreeder.com is pretty good for reading fast. I had it set too 900 wpm once, and I think that's my upper limit.

I read a lot as a kid as well, and I read a lot even now. It took me 8 hours to get through Harry Potter 7. 10 to get through HP6, and 12 for HP5, but I was way little back then.
 
people still read? i download directly to my brain. those damn fancy figures in books and journals slows the download though so i get frustrated by that.
 
I read the whole HP 7 in about 6 some hours. It had close to 700 some pages if I remember right.
 
pakbabydoll said:
I read the whole HP 7 in about 6 some hours. It had close to 700 some pages if I remember right.
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Wow thats some speed reading! I thought I read it fast in ~12 hours😀
 
Just read a lot, read for fun, you'll get better. I read the last harry potter in a few hours. 4 maybe 5? Its 784 pages for the last poster. But my speed decreases dramatically when I don't understand what I'm reading.
 
this is depressing lol
I can't even read faster than 150-160 words per minute.... anything faster would just make the words zoom by without me knowing what they were haha

Harry pot (any of the books) would take me months to read if reading 2-3 hrs a day
 
I usually read a novel (200-300 pages) in 1.5 to 3 hours. 400-500 page books go into the 5-7 hours... although it took me about 8 hours to read Picture of Dorian Grey... which is amazing by the way. (hehe that rhymes)
 
Hmm, eyeQ tells me I read at 606 words per minute. The text they gave, however, was quite light in fare and thus very easy to digest. Sure, it might take you an hour to get through one hundred pages' worth of The Hardy Boys, but can you say the same for Dostoevsky? I don't know about you, but that takes a lot longer for me to get through...
 
I've always been a fast reader-I can read a regular old novel at about 30 sec/page. Textbooks take more time, depending on 1) how tired I am, 2) how interesting the material is, and 3) how complicated said material is. I don't bother with highlighting, so I can do maybe 50 textbook pages/hr. It can be more or less, depending on how much material is being covered.

And to improve your reading speed, just read, read, read. I got fast because I spent my childhood with my nose in a book. My siblings are not so fast, because they didn't read nearly as much as I did. Practice really is key.

(and I love how everybody is like "oh, well at the age of 3 I was already reading Profiles in Courage....I finished War and Peace at the age of 9" :meanie:)
 
I dont read nearly as fast as i would like to! I'm a pretty slow reader and it is a big disadvantage on certain tests.
 
metalmd06 said:
Cegar may think its hokey, but for any of you that want to try it, go here:

http://www.eyeq.tv/?cid=130202

I just tried it again and went from 339p/m to 443 p/m. I'm not sure I would ever buy it, but it might be helpful to some. One other thing, one of you guys mentioned reading without hearing the words in your head. How the hell do you do that? I think for those of us who do read "aloud" internally it would be a tough habit to break. Any tips?

If any of you actually try this demo, I'd like to know what your results are, for curiousity's sake.
Click to expand...

That was pretty interesting. Maybe it's a standard improvement of about 100 wpm? I went from 1013 to 1121 wpm...
 
Interesting.. So in theory, those that can speed read can potentially understand very rapid speaking. Like a forwarded film for example.

Also another implication could be photographic short term memory.
 
The more someone reads scientific literature, the better and faster they get at reading scientific literature.

It's not so much a matter of your eye recognizing the words and sentences but of your brain figuring out just what the heck they mean. That's generally the limiting factor in reading.
 
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