You can also learn not to spend time saying each word in your head (called sub-vocalisation). Firstly, you can simply skim read and focus only on important words – no surprises it’s faster to read if you skip over many of the words. How could such feats be possible? Speed reading techniques centre around a few key approaches. His reading was clocked at more than 25,000 words a minute. The 1990 Guinness World Record book recognised Howard Berg as the fastest reader in the world. It would take an average reader 11 uninterrupted hours to read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. In 2007, Ann Jones read all 199,797 words of the final Harry Potter instalment in 47 minutes. You don’t have to look far to find claims of even faster reading. Her argument was simple: the way we read is inefficient. The story goes Wood could read at a speed of 2,700 words per minute.

Surely the simple answer to our toppling reading piles is simply to learn to read faster? It’s not a new idea: back in 1959, teacher Evelyn Wood published Reading Skills and later launched her Reading Dynamics training program. Most educated adults read at a speed of 200–400 words per minute. Current estimates are we now read around 54,000 words per day. Sound familiar? Given email, work reports, blog posts, books and text messages, we’re surrounded by words. I suffer from a pretty serious case of tsundoku: I have a massive, and ever-growing pile of books beside my bed that I don’t have time to read.

How fast could you read and understand a book like this? Image credit Sam Greenhalgh via Flickr Death by Tsundoku

Worlds fastest speed reader