It's weird. Three people in the last two weeks have mentioned to me that they want to learn to speed read. I can't remember learning to read. I can remember learning to speed read though. I don't know if that's what they were really trying to teach us but it's what I learned. They pulled a handfull of kids out of my class who could already read in the first grade and sent us to the media center, where we would sit around this machine rather like a filmstrip machine (not the whole projector but the little workgroup projector that displayed things on a vertical screen about the size of a 15" monitor), except it made no sound and flipped the images (which were always just text fairly fast. THey got faster as time went on. Then we took multiple choice tests about the content. It was more fun than listening to my classmates sound out words, so we went every few days.

I have to say I never realized I read faster than other people. I guess I still don't think of myself as a fast reader I suspect my dad is half again as fast at least, certainly while reading fiction anyhow. Well since everyone or three people anyhow have mentioned speed reading, I went and took some of those free online reading speed tests. Depending on the test and how much attention I can pay to reading (vs people talking to me at the same time etc)I read between 700 and 1000 words a minute on screen with 90% or better accuracy. Apparently this puts me where the software is trying to lure people into getting.

Dad apparently reads just like me, or so Mom says, she was telling me about when we were little and dad would read to us, instead of her. it would go like this "Peter Rabbit. Mr. McGreggor. Under the fence. Carrots. Yell. Run." Then as a second grader my teacher decided I couldn't read ... note that as a first grader I was off in the library playing speed reading games. Well I can't read out loud... and they made my folks record me reading out loud and play it back to me. That's when Mom realized I sounded like Dad.

Speed reading isn't something I do intentionally. It's apparently just the way I read. Certain things slow me down a lot. Old English, Icelandic Sagas, German (but not as much as the other two) and Poetry just makes no sense...which is why the icelandic sagas take me forever. Because it's work to read slowly enough to know what's going on.

I wonder what would happen if I took a speed reading class now. Or got some of that software. I wonder if I could double my speed and up my comprehension, and would it take all the fun out of reading?