Reading With the Right Brain: Read Faster by Reading Ideas Instead of Just Words (30 page)

All you want to do is get the information. All reading and all writing are different. All readers are different, too. Even each time you read the same text can be different depending on many internal and external factors. In fact, because of these factors, you can never really read the “same” book twice.

Practice Exercise #17

In this exercise, let your speed vary as necessary to maintain maximum comprehension. This natural variation in speed is like an automatic transmission, where a higher or lower rpm is selected depending on changing driving conditions. Similarly, be flexible with your reading and let the content automatically choose the speed. This can mean slowing, speeding, or stopping. It can even mean going back to pick up the trail if necessary.

Also, try some of the techniques discussed in this chapter and see how they work for you. But remember, these techniques are just suggestions. If you find they work for you, great, but your primary focus should remain pursuing the ideas and letting the speed come to you.

When you’re ready, begin reading the first thousand words of

Frankenstein
by Mary Shelley

Frankenstein

Letter 1

To Mrs. Saville,
England

St. Petersburgh,
Dec. 11th, 17—

You will rejoice to hear
that no disaster
has accompanied
the commencement
of an enterprise
which you have regarded
with such evil
forebodings.
I arrived here yesterday,
and my first task
is to assure
my dear sister
of my welfare
and increasing confidence
in the success
of my undertaking.

I am already
far north of London,
and as I walk
in the streets
of Petersburgh,
I feel
a cold northern breeze
play upon my cheeks,
which braces my nerves
and fills me
with delight.
Do you understand
this feeling?
This breeze,
which has traveled
from the regions towards
which I am advancing,
gives me a foretaste
of those icy climes.
Inspirited by this wind
of promise,
my daydreams become
more fervent
and vivid.
I try in vain
to be persuaded
that the pole
is the seat of frost
and desolation;
it ever presents itself
to my imagination
as the region of beauty
and delight.
There, Margaret,
the sun
is forever visible,
its broad disk
just skirting the horizon
and diffusing
a perpetual splendor.
There—
for with your leave,
my sister,
I will put some trust
in preceding navigators—
there snow and frost
are banished;
and,
sailing over a calm sea,
we may be wafted
to a land
surpassing in wonders
and in beauty
every region
hitherto discovered
on the habitable globe.
Its productions
and features may be
without example,
as the phenomena
of the heavenly bodies
undoubtedly are
in those
undiscovered solitudes.
What may not be expected
in a country
of eternal light?
I may there discover
the wondrous power
which attracts the needle
and may regulate
a thousand celestial
observations
that require only
this voyage to render
their seeming
eccentricities
consistent forever.
I shall satiate my ardent
curiosity with the sight
of a part
of the world
never before visited,
and may
tread a land
never before imprinted
by the foot of man.
These are my enticements,
and they are sufficient
to conquer all fear
of danger or death
and to induce me
to commence
this laborious voyage
with the joy
a child feels
when he embarks
in a little boat,
with his holiday mates,
on an expedition
of discovery
up his native river.
But supposing
all these conjectures
to be false,
you cannot contest
the inestimable benefit
which I shall confer
on all mankind,
to the last generation,
by discovering
a passage near the pole
to those countries,
to reach
at present
so many months
are requisite;
or by ascertaining
the secret of the magnet,
which,
if at all possible,
can only be effected
by an undertaking
such as mine.

These reflections have
dispelled the agitation
with which
I began my letter,
and I feel my heart
glow with an enthusiasm
which elevates me
to heaven,
for nothing contributes
so much to tranquillize
the mind
as a steady purpose—
a point on which
the soul may fix
its intellectual eye.
This expedition has been
the favorite dream
of my early years.
I have read with ardor
the accounts
of the various voyages
which have been made
in the prospect
of arriving at
the North Pacific Ocean
through the seas
which surround the pole.
You may remember
that a history
of all the voyages
made for purposes
of discovery
composed the whole
of our good
Uncle Thomas’ library.
My education
was neglected,
yet I was passionately
fond of reading.
These volumes
were my study
day and night,
and my familiarity
with them increased
that regret
which I had felt,
as a child,
on learning
that my father’s
dying injunction
had forbidden my uncle
to allow me to embark
in a seafaring life.

These visions faded
when I perused,
for the first time,
those poets
whose effusions
entranced my soul
and lifted it to heaven.
I also became a poet
and for one year
lived in a paradise
of my own creation;
I imagined that
I also might obtain
a niche in the temple
where the names
of Homer and Shakespeare
are consecrated.
You are well acquainted
with my failure
and how heavily
I bore
the disappointment.
But just at that time
I inherited
the fortune of my cousin,
and my thoughts
were turned
into the channel
of their earlier bent.

Six years have passed
since I resolved
on my present
undertaking.
I can,
even now,
remember the hour
from which
I dedicated myself
to this great enterprise.
I commenced
by inuring my body
to hardship.
I accompanied
the whale-fishers
on several expeditions
to the North Sea;
I voluntarily
endured cold,
famine,
thirst,
and want of sleep;
I often worked harder
than the common sailors
during the day and devoted my nights to the study of mathematics, the theory of medicine, and those branches of physical science from which a naval adventurer might derive the greatest practical advantage. Twice I actually hired myself as an under-mate hired myself as an under-mate in a Greenland whaler, and acquitted myself to admiration. I must own I felt a little proud when my captain offered me the second dignity in the vessel and entreated me to remain with the greatest earnestness, so valuable did he consider my services. And now, dear Margaret, do I not deserve to accomplish some great purpose? My life might have been passed in ease and luxury, but I preferred glory to every enticement that wealth placed in my path. Oh, that some encouraging voice would answer in the affirmative! My courage and my resolution is firm; but my hopes fluctuate, and my spirits are often depressed. I am about to proceed on a long and difficult voyage, the emergencies of which will demand all my fortitude: I am required not only to raise the spirits of others, but sometimes to sustain…

Chapter 18: Mythical Exercises

The field of speed reading, and by extension much of the whole arena of reading improvement, has been somewhat tarnished by several misconceptions and misrepresentations. I would prefer not to be critical, but without addressing these myths, I am concerned that the information in this book—since it departs from many of these “accepted” practices—may result in questions, confusions, or misunderstandings.

Here are some of the most persistent myths which should be debunked in order to begin making real progress in your reading improvement.

Push Your Speed

Pushing your speed is the main thrust of most speed reading courses. It’s presented as a habit to develop. Some suggest that once you develop the habit of seeing words faster, your comprehension will adapt to this higher speed and improve on its own.

You are told that you can reach any reading speed you wish this way, particularly if you increase in small increments at a time. Some examples suggest that a mechanical metronome is all that is needed to teach yourself to read faster. Simply find your “possible” reading speed, increase the metronome by one beat per minute at each reading, and voila! You’re reading faster.

After all, it’s just one beat per minute; how hard could it be, right? Well then, by this logic, you could use a metronome to learn to do
anything
faster. At just one more beat at a time, a runner could go from jogging along at a leisurely pace to breaking the land-speed record at the Bonneville Salt Flats.

The truth is, whenever you push your speed—no matter how incrementally you do it—you won’t even be “reading,” but merely waving your eyes back and forth. Pushing your speed beyond your comprehension leads to nothing more than exhaustion and frustration.

Finger Waving Patterns

This myth is a classic. It comes from the story of Evelyn Wood, who supposedly threw her book on the ground in frustration at her inability to learn to read as fast as the incredible speeds of a professor she knew. Then, as the story goes, after collecting her composure and picking up the book, she brushed off the dirt that had gathered on the open page and suddenly had an epiphany and the secret of speed reading was born! They say that by waving her hand across the page, Evelyn suddenly began to read at “supersonic speeds.”

However, none of this is true. According to a friend of hers whom I spoke with, Mrs. Wood herself said it was “baloney,” made up by the folks she sold her company to. As further proof, this incredible story doesn’t even appear in Evelyn’s own 1958 book,
Reading Skills
, in which she mentions nothing about any of the now classic finger waving patterns.

However, if you look in
The Evelyn Wood Seven-Day Speed Reading and Learning Program
, written in 1990 by Stanley D. Frank, ED.D, you will find plenty of descriptions of “The Famous—and fundamental—Evelyn Wood speed-reading hand motions, with illustrative diagrams.” In chapter five, you not only learn the “Underlining Hand Motion,” but then move on to the “‘S’ Hand Motion,” the “Question Mark,” the “‘X’ Hand Motion,” the “Loop Hand Motion,” the “‘L’ Hand Motion,” as well as a brief discussion of the “Horseshoe,” the “‘U’ Hand Motion,” the “Brush,” and the “Half-Moon.”

Of course, Wood’s original hand-waving pattern was supposedly the Brush (brushing off the book). If you have trouble making this one work, perhaps you need to try it with the book she was reading at the time—
Green Mansions
. Maybe it only worked with that book. Or maybe you only need to try some of the other patterns, like the “Zigzag,” the “Vertical Wave,” the “Double Margin,” or the “Lazy S.”

The reason Evelyn Wood never mentioned any of these patterns in her own book is because she never recommended them as a way to read faster. Unfortunately, as a paid spokesperson for the new owners of her Reading Dynamics company, she never publically disclaimed them, either, and so they entered speed reading lore as a sort of speed reading creation myth.