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I had at least 2 books on my person at all times just in case I finished one and needed another. I lined my bed with books and slept on top of them. At this level of excessive, near-constant reading I remember having a different experience of reading than I can achieve now. 2/

I wouldn't read words, I'd read phrases as solid chunks, and often treat full paragraphs similarly to the way I read sentences now; some part of my brain skimmed *in addition* to reading; it sort of told my eyes where to jump to catch the important words so I could come out 3/

of the paragraph with good comprehension. And my comprehension was good - reading tests clocked me at around 800 wpm with decent retention. What interests me about this is that I think I was doing some sort of data compression? Like, I read fewer total words than were there. 4/

I don't know how my brain managed to figure out which words to read and which ones not to at that significant a scale. I can't do this anymore; my reading speed has dropped a few hundred wpm. There's still some chunking, but it doesn't feel the same.

6:11 AM · Sep 14, 2020

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have you tried it with the same books (or same sorts of books) you read as a child? I suspect that those fantasy series were easier to skim, but this method doesn't work for more complicated material

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I think this is probably true! I was reading almost entirely fantasy, so that made it *super* easy to read fast because I was used to it.

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I love reading as well. I found out Kindle keeps track of the number of books you read, but it only counts them once. :( My most in one year was 417. Love sci-fi books. In school, I "ruined" the read a book, get a personal pizza from pizza hut program by reading too much. :(

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Have you seen that gif that blasts words at you at a high rate of speed? It's made to show that when you don't have to move your eyes you can read very fast Sword of truth is pretty nostalgic now. I remember the books breaking down into rape and communism by the end hah

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i doubt this; as a teen I read almost entirely fantasy books, and I think I learned 'how to read fantasy' in a sense; now I read a much broader variety of things which is harder to predict.

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Half off-T: When I was young I could remember a series of numbers and characters 12-15 long. Remembering half as how they sound saying them, and last half as an image. The image function dropped after ~25. Now it’s just a blur :(

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I think those of us who did this ended up psychologically different than those who didn’t. It’s a slow-burn psychedelic imprinting

@isturma

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