
Slow Reading: the antithesis of speed reading - newman8r
https://www.theindy.us/slow-reading/
======
stcredzero
My ex-girlfriend used to joke that I was "functionally illiterate." She had
gotten the habit from her mother of going to the local library and getting a
half dozen books, which she'd have read in two weeks, before she returned to
the library. I read maybe 2 novels a year at most. However, she would always
marvel at how I could recall details and recount sequences of events or
describe memorable scenes. All she was ever left with was a kind of emotional
impression from having read the books, and could recall very little. She would
also be bewildered at watching me read. Sometimes I would read just a few
pages, then put the book down then stare at the walls, absorbing what I'd just
read. There was one part of "Kavalier and Klay" that was less than a dozen
pages long, but took me two days to get through.

~~~
DoreenMichele
Similar.

My ex read crazy fast and learned a lot of his vocabulary from reading -- and
mispronounced a lot of stuff, couldn't remember details, etc.

I was in gifted classes in school. I have always read slower than most of the
people around me, like the ex, my sister, my kids, my high school classmates.
But, yes, I remember details, etc.

Before age and boatloads of prescription drugs stole my memory, I could, at
times, nearly quote some paragraphs for a few weeks afterwards in some cases
-- especially if I wrote it or if I read through it more than once for some
reason.

------
Ptyx
Nietzsche wrote about slow reading:

"Philologie nämlich ist jene ehrwürdige Kunst, welche von ihrem Verehrer vor
allem eins heischt, beiseite gehn, sich Zeit lassen, still werden, langsam
werden –, als eine Goldschmiedekunst und -kennerschaft des Wortes, die lauter
feine vorsichtige Arbeit abzutun hat und nichts erreicht, wenn sie es nicht
lento erreicht. Gerade damit aber ist sie heute nötiger als je, gerade dadurch
zieht sie und bezaubert sie uns am stärksten, mitten in einem Zeitalter der
»Arbeit«, will sagen: der Hast, der unanständigen und schwitzenden
Eilfertigkeit, das mit allem gleich »fertig werden« will, auch mit jedem alten
und neuen Buche: – sie selbst wird nicht so leicht irgend womit fertig, sie
lehrt gut lesen, das heißt langsam, tief, rück- und vorsichtig, mit
Hintergedanken mit offengelassenen Türen, mit zarten Fingern und Augen
lesen... Meine geduldigen Freunde, dies Buch wünscht sich nur vollkommne Leser
und Philologen: lernt mich gut lesen!"

"Philology is that venerable art which demands of its votaries one thing above
all: to go aside, to take time, to become still, to become slow – it is a
goldsmith's art and connoisseurship of the word which has nothing but
delicate, cautious work to do and achieves nothing if it does not achieve it
lento. But for precisely this reason it is more necessary than ever today, by
precisely this means does it entice and enchant us the most, in the midst of
an age of 'work', that is to say, of hurry, of indecent and perspiring haste,
which wants to 'get everything done' at once, including every old or new book:
this art does not so easily get anything done, it teaches to read well, that
is to say, to read slowly, deeply, looking cautiously before and aft, with
reservations, with doors left open, with delicate eyes and fingers . . . My
patient friends, this book desires for itself only perfect readers and
philologists: learn to read me well!"

~~~
tmsldd
I wonder whether Nietzsche wrote that because of his mother tongue... for me,
switching between English and German is just like switching down 5 gears in a
car...

I think of reading as a process of tuning between the mind of the writer and
the reader.. like a dialogue, you can modulate the speed until you both feel
comfortable with ..

------
abhiminator
Few things are as pleasurable as slowly savoring the text imprinted on a paper
or an e-book reader, especially fiction that engrossed you.

I always make sure to leave some relaxing music on before diving into my
favorite piece of text/book. Practicing 'mindful reading' has greatly enhanced
my reading experience and it goes hand-in-hand with slow reading. [0]

[0] [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/19/well/mind/how-to-be-
mindf...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/19/well/mind/how-to-be-mindful-
while-reading.html)

~~~
jonnybgood
What are you reading on parchment? Pedantic but if you're meaning paper, paper
and parchment are not the same thing.

~~~
abhiminator
Fixed. Sympathize with your pedantism.

~~~
eigenvalue
*pedantry (intentionally self-referential!)

------
azeirah
The only reasonable approach is to adjust your reading speed based on the
topic you're reading. Is it interesting or relevant? Read slower. Is it dense
and complex? Read slower.

Are you just scanning or reading for hobby/light interest, maybe hoping to
encounter something interesting? Read a bit faster and slow down when needed.

I find that there are so many weird misconceptions about "how you are supposed
to read a book". Just read however you like, reading comprehension and
regulating your speed based on the content is a skill, something you might
want to practice. But you definitely don't have to speed-read or slow-read
everything once you've learned how to do that.

~~~
throwawayjava
_> reading comprehension and regulating your speed based on the content is a
skill_

Knowing how to modulate is an important skill in programming and mathematics
as well.

I've seen the two extremes of "failure to modulate" with programs, especially
with new programmers (students/interns). Some will speed read through the
program, never slowing down to pay attention to critical pieces that may help
them discover how to fix a bug or implement a missing feature. Others will
slowly and methodically read every line, wasting away days on what should take
hours or minutes by performing a depth-first search through each stack at each
program point.

I've also seen this failure to modulate in mathematics. Students who get to
chapter 5 of a dense text before realizing they have no intuitive or even
formal understanding of the definitions on page 1. And students who spend
their entire week interrogating unimportant definitions or lemmas because they
do not get a sense for the overall structure of the chapter before diving into
details.

Reading is such an important skill, and we as a society do a fairly good job
at teaching how to read non-technical material. But reading skills are
probably the most important thing that's (not) taught in math and CS.

~~~
jansho
Assuming that the student is a complete beginner. Do you think the best way to
read a challenging technical book is to speed-read at the start - to pinpoint
the essentials and get an overall picture - then read again, this time slower?

At both speeds, it’s still deliberate reading.

Maybe you know more techniques which are better?

~~~
azeirah
#BEGINRAMBLE

I personally feel there are multiple "levels" or "layers" to understanding a
book. It's a bit loose, but I'd say technical books have "structure",
"content", "detail" and "cohesion".

The structure of the book is how chapters, section, subsections and the index
are related to each other. You can learn about the structure by taking a look
at the index, reading chapter intros/outros/summaries, and you will get a
better feeling for it while reading the book as well.

The content is basically just everything in the book except any meta-content,
such as headings, the index and references, etc... So graphs, text, chapters,
blablalba

The details of the book are the most relevant, precise, thought-out content,
you could alternatively call these "topics". Consider a given chapter of any
book, it usually introduces a topic, gives some examples, counterexamples,
might tell a story about it, it could add a debate, show a graph, and it might
describe sub-topics. The whole chapter is mostly about that topic as a whole
anyway. That's the detail.

Lastly, the "cohesion" is how the book's topics are interrelated on a detailed
level. For example, what implications does the content introduced in chapter 5
have on chapter 6? And on chapter 4? Some concepts take multiple chapters (or
books!) to comprehend as a whole. Sometimes a book needs to introduce some
concepts before the bigger picture can be explained. This cohesion, in my
mind, is related to the "larger than the sum of its parts" idea.

I guess the idea of cohesion can also be extended to how the book's content
and ideas relate to what you already know, or other books you may or may not
have read. Again; it's how the topics interrelate.

Different reading styles, writing exercises and re-readings of a book will
give expand your understanding in those 4 layers.

For example, skimming (30 min, skip through entire book) will give you a vague
but helpful foundational feeling for the structure and cohesion of the book.
Likewise, speed-reading will give a reasonable foundational feeling for the
content and detail of the book. Writing a mind-map of a chapter, asking
questions about paragraphs, summarizing chapters will improve your
understanding of the content and topics.

I personally feel that I often don't completely "understand" a book, I believe
that if I take the time to work on those 4 layers of understanding on every
level of the book, I would.

I strongly strongly strongly recommend taking a look at the book "how to read
a book", the concepts I just stated are my own, but the book helped me
completely rethink about how I approach reading in general. I used to be
afraid of tacking huge books, I feel like I can actually read them with some
confidence

#ENDRAMBLE

~~~
jansho
I’m a rambler too so it’s all fair ;)

See, I’ve been focusing on reading this year, more specifically to find out
what my style and interests are, and how I can develop them further. For me
it’s unrealistic to “just read away” - there are many different types of books
and courtesy to our digital world/ genes/ whatever, my brain is definitely re-
wired so that it’s very difficult to maintain focus for long. So naturally I’m
interested in reading techniques (and other types of acquisition) and what
others’ experiences are like.

But the deeper I go into this project, I am also beginning to wonder that
perhaps, even self-proclaimed bookworms may not actually be reading as
effectively as they think they are. By “effective”, I mean getting the same-
ish level of clarity that the author had when writing it. And so I think
you’re right about books having layers of meaning. Which this alone has
powerful implications: it means a _reading list_ should not be a ticking box
exercise, as so many of us think, but a _reference library_ \- you have the
freedom to read and revisit however you like, depending on your current
intellectual needs. And it also means that books are actually very dynamic and
so you shouldn’t really take them _too_ seriously - it’s OK to get an
understanding to a limited level only.

It’s interesting, let’s see how this reading project goes.

Anyway back to chomping dense technical books. This is definitely a big
weakness of mine - no matter how interesting a book is, I just cannot stay
motivated for long. But it may be because I’m approaching it the wrong way. I
generally like to dip in and out, and be very selective about what to savour
in. So I am probably treating technical books wrongly - taking it too lightly
when each should be an individual project, really. I think another factor is
confidence - it’s easy to get intimidated but I find that the more I become
familiar with the concepts and basics, the tome gets easier. Which means it’s
necessary to have a “learning pathway” of books e.g. Sal Khan’s circuit videos
and “Electronica for Dummies” before the granddaddy “The Art of Electronics”.

------
keiferski
_“As the biggest library if it is in disorder is not as useful as a small but
well-arranged one, so you may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it
will be of far less value to you than a much smaller amount if you have not
thought it over for yourself.”_

– Arthur Schopenhauer

I’ve always been struck by this quote, because I think Schopenhauer is
fundamentally right. Information is only useful when you master it inside and
out.

~~~
jakecopp
I like this quote, but if libraries were hash tables with O(1) lookup time a
large messy one is better.

Sometimes the way thoughts pop into my head I think brains are more like hash
tables than arrays.

Of course, extreme over simplification :D

~~~
ncphillips
> but if libraries were hash tables with O(1) lookup time a large messy one is
> better.

If the lookup time was O(1) then it's not a large messy library, it's a large
neat library.

Besides, the "neatness" of your mind is an metaphor for your ability
understand a piece of knowledge in the context of the whole. This is not a
literal organizational issue, but a conceptual understanding of how different
ideas "fit" together. It takes time and effort to deeply understand and
connect a single piece of knowledge to the whole.

This quote is not about your ability to quickly recall X, but your ability to
relate X to A, B, and C.

------
foobaw
For those interested, I recommend reading "How to Read a Book" by Adler. It
basically outlines the details of getting the most out of reading in different
contexts.

~~~
troupe
Agreed. It is an incredible book at getting you to really think about how you
read.

Only tangentially related: When it came out and became a bestseller, another
book came out kind of making fun of the title. It was called "How to Read Two
Books."

~~~
ralusek
Should have made a video called "How to Read 'How to Read a Book.'"

Necessary break in the irony of a book telling you how to read books.

------
elil17
I’m dyslexic. I’ve had the benefit of a great education and my reading has
gotten a lot better over the years. Of course, when I couldn’t read at all, I
didn’t enjoy it. But between 4th and 7th grade, when I _could_ read, but only
slowly, I practically inhaled books. After that, I learned to read faster,
which was great for the demands of high school classes but, I have realized
more recently, killed my love of reading. I think returning to the way I used
to read, where I labored over every word, may help me regain it.

~~~
PretzelFisch
I have dyslexic issues and always find myself falling back to reading each
word. But as an interesting antidote I hated to read before 6th grade and
after that just inhaled fiction books until collage where I shifted back to
slow reading dense technical writings.

------
baron816
This makes me think of required summer reading in lower and middle school. I
hated it so much. We’d have to read something like 5-10 books over the three
month break. It was totally counter productive. The point was to get us to
read a lot, thinking that’s how we’d learn to enjoy it (or something like
that). I’d have to skim through as much as I could hoping to pick up enough to
BS my way through a book report the first week of school. If anything, it may
have taught me to not take homework seriously and to cheat. Luckily, I didn’t
become a big cheater.

Maybe had they just assigned a single book and encouraged us to read it slowly
and carefully, we could have enjoyed reading more and actually absorbed the
text.

------
madengr
I’ll wager the web, and especially handheld devices, are destroying people’s
reading comprehension. I find myself skipping through text, looking for that
kernel. I always print out technical articles. The printed page is a cue to
slow down.

------
nickjj
I've noticed the complete opposite effect.

I used to read really slow and take down meticulous notes.

Just starting a book meant I had predefined ideas of "ok, you're in this for
the long haul, you know how much effort it will take to consume this
material". That in itself is a reading deterrent.

If your goal of reading is to learn something new and improve yourself, then
you're way better off seeing if you can learn the important bits of the book
(80 / 20 rule), and then repeat this process for 10 different books in a
similar subject.

The difference between fully slow reading and taking notes on a book could be
on the order of 15 dedicated "real" hours vs 30 minutes of skimming and
reading specific things that highly relate to what you're doing now.

If you only read a book carefully once, then chances are you're going to
forget most of what you read anyways. Might as well make the best use of your
time and devour as much as you can to get you going and then spend a majority
of your time doing the thing that you were trying to improve from reading in
the first place.

Basically treat books as something you'll reference / skim many times over
instead of being a super thorough "only once" event where you treat it as if
someone is going to give you a graded test when you're done.

~~~
dwighttk
Do both: read books quickly, re-read books slowly.

------
baxtr
I have never been a fan of fast reading techniques/book summary services. I
like taking my time with books (maybe too much sometimes) because I feel
understand the author's idea better if I get some time to reflect on the
words. So I usually try not to rush through books. However, slow reading (the
concept described in this article) makes me feel sleepy... I guess I stick to
my inner reading speed.

~~~
ebiester
I think of it the other way around. While I didn't get much from the 800wpm
level, I found the training on not backtracking and understanding the eye
movements allowed me to understand better, not worse, and still allowed me to
stop at my leisure. It's less that I'm rushing through the book and more that
I'm being more intentional about it.

~~~
hazz99

        I found training on not backtracking and understanding eye movements allowed me to understand better ...
    

What did you train in regards to backtracking & eye movement? It seems vaguely
familiar to how I read (backtracking over paragraphs pretty frequently) -- is
there some reading I can do on this?

~~~
leg100
Tony Buzan's speed reading book brings this up, particularly the eye movement.

The eye has two types of movement: the one you use to move from one object to
another; and then the one that follows an object. He recommends the latter
when speed reading, using a pen or pointy thing as an aid, your eyes following
the tip as you sweep it across the page. You can move it from side to side, or
down the middle, or zig-zagging, etc.

You accompany this with a metronome, to move the pen in regular movements.

I think in time the idea is that you can abandon the pen and metronome once
you've got used to reading this way.

~~~
kqr
Aren't saccades inevitable unless actually tracking something?

~~~
leg100
Maybe. One could try imagining an invisible line and tracking that. It helps
not to focus on the text itself, but on the space just above the page, just as
the tip of pen would be hovering above the page as it sweeps across. That way
the eye doesn't fixate on words and cause saccades.

------
zhte415
I speed read things that can be speed read. I did speed read this article,
about 12-15 seconds, and nothing would have been lost on a re-read, which I
did. Within this, some sentences were a bit too engaging which was annoying.

I don't normally choose to read like this, but it's a quick way to find
something to stick and pause on. The only thing that made me stick and pause
was the use of italics. The typography of the blog and line spacing is super
comfortable, a sure assistance to speed reading.

A novel, creative writing, a requirements document, analysis paper, no.
Because every word has to have been carefully chosen. I enjoy that coz it's
not writing for information distribution for the sake of it.

~~~
PretzelFisch
What's your technique for speed reading on the screen? I learned tricks for
books that relied on my hand to help but they were not useful when reading a
screen.

~~~
zhte415
That's why I explicitly mentioned the comfort of the text size and line-
spacing. Because that doesn't often happen.

I load an ebook to calibre and go from there. 28px, about 12-20 words per
line, usually works for a phone at arm's length or a laptop at desk length.

I never learnt via any hand techniques, just picked it up on paper, a half-day
(less than that as.. lunch) and good pointers. I think hand-blocking would
have restricted speed. Your hand is not as fast as our eyes.

------
hevi_jos
Speed reading also means "speed understanding". Glancing over words is not
speed reading.

Speed reading means you could factually proof you could read extremely fast
and retain most of the facts of the text.

From my experience, there is people out there that could do that (after
extensive training). The main problem is that you need a standardized way of
displaying the text so the mind could understand it super fast.

I have met speed readers personally in Spain, France and Germany.

For example HN does not let you speed read because of the format with long
lines.

On a practical way way most text is not formatted for speed reading, it should
be preprocessed first, which is illegal because of copyright in most
countries.

------
darth_mastah
I've always been a slow reader. There was a time when I considered that to be
a fault. I tried to learn faster reading a number of times, but each time I
found it unnatural and not very enjoyable. I have also noticed that reading
slowly allows me to focus better and gain deeper understanding of the text. At
some point I stopped trying to become a fast reader and now I'm just a slow,
happy reader.

------
dri_ft
Down right now, but here's a mirror:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20180704140141/https://www.thein...](https://web.archive.org/web/20180704140141/https://www.theindy.us/slow-
reading/)

------
k__
I'm a really slow reader, I wish I was faster.

My girlfriend has double the reading speed.

I have to read every word for itself :/

I can get to 100 pages per hour, but only if I identify filler paragraphs
early on and skip them.

------
AzzieElbab
Slow coding next? Could save the world one day

~~~
alttab
I've seen far too much of it

------
paulpauper
It depends on how interesting the content it. Captivating content is easier to
savor than boring, predictable content.

------
juskrey
It took me a year to read Seneca's letters to Lucilius. And it was the most
fruitful reading in my life.

------
mlatu
Same goes for binge-watching a series.

Imagine watching all seasons of black mirror in one day...

------
flattone
Ive not had a more validating experience on HN.

------
singularity2001
Next hype: "Normal reading", synthesizing the benefits of Slow Reading and
Fast Reading.

~~~
dilapidator
I'm sure there's an undercurrent reflective of a generalizable reality at work
here.

Speed reading was desirable when lots of new exciting things were emerging in
the late nineties. Note that simply "reading fast" didn't prevent the dot com
bust.

Now, we have lots of new things, but they aren't exciting to us. In fact the
prevailing wind is that of fatigue and overload. So now, going slow is perhaps
perferable, whatever difference it might actually make.

In an economic sense, slow downs are viewed by go-getters as a reason to
panic. "Oh no! I won't get my lunch at noon!" is how best to interpret that
panic.

We actually have a lot of cool new things that magically appeared over the
past thirty years, and as someone who has lived through it all, I feel like
treadmill processes such as dependency hell and relentless up-versioning to
bigger numbers robbed me of opportunities to deeply explore promising
technologies.

But speed reading wasn't what was going to fix past problems, so why should
slow reading fix current problems. It does seem to point to other facts
though, if one chooses to look with those eyes.

