I tend to read fairly slowly, basically meditating on the reading material. I
use the text as a guide, and I follow lots of associations and related
thoughts. How slow I read depends on how interesting the material is to me.
I read less interesting stuff faster, since I have little interest in thinking
about the ideas it triggers in me, but I really slow down when something gets
interesting, and I read passages over and over, seeing new meaning every time,
stopping frequently to ponder over the ideas in my mind. Speed reading would
defeat my entire purpose of reading, because I would just skim over all the
interesting stuff instead of thinking it over carefully. I've tried to speed
read, and I can go pretty fast, but the faster I go, the more meaningless the
material seems to me. I'm trying to learn as much as possible when I read; my
main focus is not to get to the end of the book as fast as possible.
Speed reading is about attractive to me as speed sex -- both are fine if all
you want to do is hurry up and get it over with.
- David Musick