Got a book on how to speed read

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The name of the book is Proven Speed Reading Techniques by John R. Torrance. The author is a productivity coach. I have not really read the book from beginning to end, rather, I am more interested in the basic principles. One basic principle is to embrace one's level of reading and comprehension. This is a big one for me. I am in denial that my comprehension sucks and keep insisting that I need to increase my level of reading, retention, and understanding. I am looking for a magic bullet, but I will never improve unless I first really embrace my current level of ability.

Another basic principle is to eliminate or reduce subvocalization. I think I might be able to do this consciously but will take practice like anything else. Regarding comprehension, Torrance says to practice visualizing what one reads, or thinking in pictures. I feel like I am better at doing this sometimes more so than other times, but it will take dedication and effort. There was a world speed-reading champion by the name of Anne Jones, who clocked 4700 WPM. I would be happy if I could read that fast and retain and comprehend all of it. I know it's still not on the level of eidetic memory, but it's still pretty impressive.

How long did it take you to read it?

My oldest son was having trouble with college classes that required a lot of memorizing. I started doing research into memory techniques. One thing that helped him was an App called Anki

https://docs.ankiweb.net/getting-help.html

If your reading comprehension is not as strong as you would like it to be and you want to work on your vocabulary try Anki. My son found it helped him a lot.

One author on Memory techniques who also wrote books on speed reading was Tony Buzan.

You can improve anything with enough effort.

https://artofmemory.com/wiki/Speed_Reading/

Art of Memory Inc. -
The Memory Techniques Wiki - Speed Reading

I didn't read it. I was just looking for some basic principles to help me with my reading. It was mainly out of curiosity.

over the years had a couple of courses on speed reading. Reading is my superpower anyways, but it really is something you get better at with practice. I expect there are youtubes out there about it, too.

Thanks. My mind goes off into distant places from time to time. I have schizophrenia/psychosis, so go figure. I once read that there was a father who made his son memorize his entire social studies textbook, and the boy developed a photographic memory.

The author of the speed-reading book I got actually said that one of the keys to learning how to speed read is to embrace one's current level of reading, retention rate, and comprehension. So if I do that, I would be satisfied. Even if I never learn how to speed-read. Heck, I would be happy if I could read at a normal reading speed (≈300WPM with 50-60% comprehension).

But like you (and the author) said, reading more in one's spare time will help one to get better at reading - with practice .