HOW FAST CAN YOU READ?

For most people, their reading speed is a source of pride. I have a friend who boasts of getting through the average novel in a matter of two hours or less. For people like me, whose reading speed is a couple of notches slower than average, it sometimes can give a complex.
So it is with pleasure that I discovered you could – at least in theory – improve your reading speed without losing out on comprehension. The average reading speed in humans is about 200 words per minute, and there are some apps that promise to quicken your reading to at least 1000 words per minute.
That means you can read War and Peace in around nine hours, and Moby Dick in about four. Imagine all the classics that you can read, the information that you can glean, the experiences that you can have. If true, you could have five lifetimes of reading squeezed into one.
Sounds too good to be true? Yes, says Sally Andrews, a cognitive psychology professor at the University of Sydney. Andrews says that our brains are hardwired to read at a certain level, and that most of the pauses in reading occur in order for us to comprehend the meaning of what is written. For instance, long words take longer to more time to register, and of course, complex paragraphs and ideas take longer still.
Though speed readers may argue otherwise, Andrews argues that people who read more quickly than average often end up losing something in the bargain, and they end up reading only part of the text. So you won’t end up reading five times as much; rather, you will read five times as many books, but only a portion of each.
Deep, slow reading is beneficial, after all.