Reading With the Right Brain: Read Faster by Reading Ideas Instead of Just Words (27 page)

This also makes your reading smoother. Thinking ahead while you are reading is like looking farther down the road instead of at the pavement right in front of you. This makes it much easier to go faster as there are fewer course corrections necessary; comprehension is increased due to the contextual clues of the preceding text.

Thinking ahead and anticipating what the text will say will also help you stay in the zone by avoiding surprises. Like when you ride a bicycle, you’re a lot less wobbly when you look ahead rather than down at the ground beneath you.

Anticipatory reading is reading aggressively, looking ahead and anticipating where the author is going. Everything you read will therefore be more firmly attached to what has gone before and what lies ahead.

Speed Minimums

Although comprehension will determine your speed, it is a good idea to try still to maintain a certain minimum speed if possible. Just as riding a bike too slowly can make it difficult to maintain your balance, reading too slowly makes it difficult to take in larger ideas at a time and to avoid slipping into the old habit of verbalizing.

Of course, it will still be necessary to read very slowly at times, but unless the situation demands it, a slightly faster speed will usually be helpful. You don’t want to read faster than your comprehension, but reading fast enough can also
help
comprehension by maintaining your reading momentum. It’s a balancing act, and sometimes you will even lose your balance, but just be flexible and do your best.

Another way to apply the bicycle analogy is by comparing the black and gray text used in this book to training wheels. It is a tool which helps you by removing one of the tasks—balancing the bike or finding the phrases—while you practice and get comfortable with the rest of the skills you need to acquire—pedaling and steering or reading whole ideas and visualizing.

I hope I didn’t stretch this analogy too far, but analogies can be very powerful aids to understanding concepts. In fact, analogies are actually quite conceptual in their very nature because they work by attaching new ideas to familiar ones via the attributes they have in common.

But no matter how fast or slow you read,
any
speed is better than reading without comprehension. As much as you would love to read faster and no matter what your current capabilities are, there is no reading at all if you do not understand what you read. So even if you think reading conceptually is slowing you down at first, it may be that your old “faster” speed wasn’t really reading at all, but merely recognizing the words.

Everyone learning to improve their reading, starts at a different place and with different strengths and weaknesses. Since this book is designed to help people read better, the more help you need, the more help this book will be able to offer. Some people will make more gains than others, and no one really knows what their potential is until they reach it. But all practice is good and never a waste of time. The only wasted time is the time wasted before deciding to start improving your reading.

Practice Exercise #15

As your read the next practice exercise, remember that speed will only come from more powerful comprehension. Read for the ideas; if you visualize it, the speed will come.

The two main things to remember about reading faster are to concentrate on comprehension, and be flexible. Speed will be the reward of this comprehension and flexibility.

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

The Three Musketeers
by Alexandre Dumas

The Three Musketeers

On the first Monday
of the month
of April, 1625,
the market town of Meung,
in which the author
of ROMANCE OF THE ROSE
was born,
appeared to be in
as perfect a state
of revolution
as if
the Huguenots
had just made
a second
La Rochelle of it.
Many citizens,
seeing the women flying
toward the High Street,
leaving their children
crying at the open doors,
hastened to don
the cuirass,
and supporting
their somewhat
uncertain courage
with a musket
or a partisan,
directed their steps
toward the hostelry
of the Jolly Miller,
before which
was gathered,
increasing every minute,
a compact group,
vociferous
and full of curiosity.

In those times
panics
were common,
and few days
passed without
some city or other
registering
in its archives
an event
of this kind.
There were nobles,
who made war
against
each other;
there was the king,
who made war
against
the cardinal;
there was Spain,
which made war
against
the king.
Then,
in addition
to these concealed
or public,
secret
or open wars,
there were robbers,
mendicants,
Huguenots,
wolves,
and scoundrels,
who made war
upon
everybody.
The citizens always
took up arms
readily against thieves,
wolves or scoundrels,
often against nobles
or Huguenots,
sometimes against
the king,
but never against
cardinal or Spain.
It resulted, then,
from this habit
that on the said
first Monday of April,
1625,
the citizens,
on hearing the clamor,
and seeing neither the
red-and-yellow standard
nor the livery
of the Duc de Richelieu,
rushed toward the hostel
of the Jolly Miller.
When arrived there,
the cause of the hubbub
was apparent to all.

A young man—
we can sketch
his portrait
at a dash.
Imagine to yourself
a Don Quixote
of eighteen;
a Don Quixote
without his corselet,
without his coat of mail,
without his cuisses;
a Don Quixote clothed
in a woolen doublet,
the blue color
of which had faded
into a nameless shade
between lees of wine
and a heavenly azure;
face long
and brown;
high cheek bones,
a sign of sagacity;
the maxillary muscles
enormously developed,
an infallible sign
by which
a Gascon
may always be detected,
even without his cap—
and our young man wore
a cap set off
with a sort of feather;
the eye open
and intelligent;
the nose hooked,
but finely chiseled.
Too big for a youth,
too small for
a grown man,
an experienced eye
might have taken him
for a farmer’s son
upon a journey
had it not been
for the long sword which,
dangling from
a leather baldric,
hit against the calves
of its owner
as he walked,
and against
the rough side
of his steed
when he was on horseback.

For our young man
had a steed
which was the observed
of all observers.
It was a Bearn pony,
from twelve
to fourteen years old,
yellow in his hide,
without a hair
in his tail,
but not without windgalls
on his legs,
which,
though going
with his head lower
than his knees,
rendering a martingale
quite unnecessary,
contrived nevertheless
to perform his
eight leagues a day.
Unfortunately,
the qualities
of this horse
were so well concealed
under his
strange-colored hide
and his
unaccountable gait,
that at a time
when everybody
was a connoisseur
in horseflesh,
the appearance
of the aforesaid
pony at Meung—
which place
he had entered
about a quarter
of an hour before,
by the gate of Beaugency—
produced
an unfavorable feeling,
which extended
to his rider.

And this feeling
had been
more painfully perceived
by young d’Artagnan—
for so was
the Don Quixote
of this second
Rosinante named—
from his not being able
to conceal from himself
the ridiculous appearance
that such
a steed gave him,
good horseman as he was.
He had sighed deeply,
therefore,
when accepting
the gift of the pony
from M. d’Artagnan
the elder.
He was not ignorant
that such a beast
was worth at least
twenty livres;
and the words
which had accompanied
the present
were above all price.

“My son,”
said the old Gascon
gentleman,
in that pure Bearn PATOIS
of which Henry IV
could never rid himself,
“this horse was born
in the house
of your father
about thirteen years ago,
and has remained
in it ever since,
which ought
to make you love it.
Never sell it;
allow it to die
tranquilly and honorably
of old age,
and if you make
a campaign with it,
take as much
care of it
as you would
of an old servant.
At court,
provided you have ever
the honor to go there,”
continued M. d’Artagnan
the elder,
“—an honor to which,
remember,
your ancient nobility
gives you the right—
sustain worthily
your name of gentleman,
which has been worthily
borne by your ancestors for five hundred years, both for your own sake and the sake of those who belong to you. By the latter I mean your relatives and friends. Endure nothing from anyone except Monsieur the Cardinal and the king. It is by his courage, please observe, by his courage alone, that a gentleman can make his way nowadays. Whoever hesitates for a second perhaps allows the bait to escape which during that exact second fortune held out to him. You are young. You ought to be brave for two reasons: the first is that you are a Gascon, and the second is that you are my son. Never fear quarrels, but seek adventures. I have taught you how to handle a sword; you have thews of iron, a wrist of steel. Fight on all occasions. Fight the more for duels being forbidden, since consequently there is twice as much courage in fighting. I have nothing to give you, my son, but fifteen crowns, my horse, and the counsels you have just heard. Your mother will add to them a recipe for a certain balsam, which she had from a Bohemian and which has the miraculous virtue of curing all the wounds…

Chapter 16: Comprehension Speeds

Information Speed

Information speed is the speed at which information enters your mind. If this could be measured, it would be more meaningful than words per minute. In fact, words per minute is actually pretty meaningless without considering information speed.