Rating: 
Summary: Helped a little
Review: Decent book on the techniques used to achieve faster reading rates. Aside from underlining hand movements and just plain common sense things there was some substance in here. When we read it's natural to sound the words in our heads. True speed reading aims to bypass the auditory section of the brain. By keeping your vocal chord busy, by talking or humming, you can achieve this with some practice and dramatically improve your speed.
Rating: 
Summary: Helped a lot
Review: I am an advocate of "right-brain" thinking but had never considered using this approach for reading. I had never seen the way I currently read as linear. This technique opens a whole new frontier in learning for me. It has helped me considerably in a very short time. The advise for studying and note-taking are real time savers.
I learned Sign Language several years ago so the idea of letting your mind grasp the concepts rather than reading each word out loud appeals to me in the same way that I believe Sign Language is actually a faster way to communicate rather than speaking each word.
Rating: 
Summary: Before you make the same mistake I did
Review: I bought "Remember Everything You Read" and "The Evelyn Wood Seven-Day Speed Reading and Learning Program", thinking they were companion books. I checked them out, they are the same word for word.Get "The Evelyn Wood Seven-Day Speed Reading and Learning Program". It is the same price (a penny cheaper) and it hardcover, a much nicer book. Unfortunately, after paying return postage and dealing with the hassel, it wouldn't be worth returning this book. Guess my sister in middle school gets a new book.
Rating:
Summary: Before you make the same mistake I did
Review: I bought "Remember Everything You Read" and "The Evelyn Wood Seven-Day Speed Reading and Learning Program", thinking they were companion books. I checked them out, they are the same word for word. Get "The Evelyn Wood Seven-Day Speed Reading and Learning Program". It is the same price (a penny cheaper) and it hardcover, a much nicer book. Unfortunately, after paying return postage and dealing with the hassel, it wouldn't be worth returning this book. Guess my sister in middle school gets a new book.
Rating:
Summary: This book has changed my life in a big way.
Review: I was looking for a book to make me read fast because i was tired of taking a long time to read. When i saw this book, I knew that I wanted it. When I started reading the book I thought it would take me several days to read it. But to my amazement, i finished it in 4 hours. When I started reading, I could read at only 294 words per minute. The average reading is only 250 words per minute. By the time i read the first chapter, I had already increased my speed tod 497 words per minute. I was amazed by what I accomplished. As I was finishing the book, I was learing how to organize my note taking and write very fast. Seven days after I finished the book I was reading at 900 words per minute. I was shocked. In the book it said that I would read close to 2000 words per minute after several weeks. But it didnt stop there. I was so happy i could speed read that I was reading everything I could get my hands on. One day when I was reading in class, the words just jumped out at me and became like a motion picture. I didnt know what had happened. After that, I just continued reading. My grades in school went from c minuses to a's. This book changed my life so well, that I didnt think that you could put a price on this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Not Bad, Especially for the Price!
Review: Judging by the success stories in all these speed reading books I've been going over, there sure are a lot of 800+wpm readers out there (among whom I DO NOT rank!). This book makes similar fantastic claims...you can read up to 3,000 wpm, etc. One thing this book is pretty emphatic about, though, is that this kind of speed takes WORK, and regular "workouts." In other words, you have keep at it, or you lose the ability. The book doesn't focus on speed reading. Rather, it presents a whole learning system, of which speed reading is a part. I bought it primarily because it was cheap, and was pleasantly surprised to discover that there is some pretty sound study-skills instruction here. This is very much another accelerated learning book, without explicitly being touted as one. Kaplan's main reading strategy is "Layered Reading," which, if you've read other books in this field, you'll recognize. You begin by previewing (headings, bold print, etc.), then do a fast "read" through, at 2-4 seconds a page, to get a little more information, then do it again at a slightly slower speed, then, back to the beginning, and read through at your comfortable reading speed. Then you review. How can this possibly be "accelerated"? Because when you read, you read at 1500 words per minute. If you can, that is! The key to speedy learning with this system--as, arguably, with all these accelerated learning systems--is being able to read fast. Very fast. This book's sub-900 wpm reading tactic involves learning to read chunks of a page at once...you mentally divide the page down the middle, and then horizontally 5 times or so. Kaplan says that with practice you will be able to comprehend meaning from words within sentence read out of order. Maybe...for me, it has worked only on VERY easy texts, and then my comprehension was hardly outstanding. I certainly wouldn't pleasure read like this. To be honest, though, I haven't practiced this technique all that much. Is it really possible to read at 3000 wpm? I don't know. I haven't met anyone who does. Kaplan says that within a month, though, you should be able to read at least 1,500 wpm...I've been practicing speed reading for a couple months, and I'm sure as hell nowhere near that range yet. And I read a lot. Still, this is not a bad book. I think it will be especially useful to younger students...serious high school and junior high students, for instance. It is straightforward, and easy to read. Kaplan cuts right to the chase, without wasting time exploring "mind science," as so many accelerated learning books do. Success will not come without a lot of work, though.
Rating:
Summary: Oh if it were so easy
Review: Many have recommended this book to me, and I have to admit that I was hesitant to get it. It sounded too good to be true to me. Ok, so I read this book in an hour. It was easy to speed-read. Unfortunately, most books are not. I consider myself a fairly fast reader, so some of the tips and tricks I found very interesting. But for me, mostly it was just the fact that people exist that can really do this was what fascinated me. I could not believe that there were Presidents of the USA, and prominent CEO's, important professors and politicians who can read and digest so much information so fast. I think it mostly comes down to necessity, desire, and confidence (or maybe arrogance). A person can pick up a book and get the 'gist' of it in a few minutes if they feel that they don't really want to 'waste' the time reading it word for word. Some of the books I did tend to skim sections of, so these tips were helpful in those circumstances. And as I start grad school, I imagine that I will have the necessity to speed-read a LOT of materials in the future. So this book inspired me to practice speed-reading more, and to try to really make new habits. There are four tips that really stuck in my mind: (1) Be OK with reading out of order - blocks of words (2) Trust your eyes - don't 'hear' the words in your mind (practice by only reading out loud key words) (3) Learn to read vertically - even get words in periphery (4) Understand the 'gestalt' of what you read - the gist. But I still enjoy reading a big, long, engrossing book and totally losing myself in it, which is something speed-reading does not seem to allow.
Rating:
Summary: Good place to start Speed Reading
Review: The book is easy to read and the exercises easy to understand. It takes practice to speed read just like running miles. Using the hand scan technique is good for starters but you would like to get away from that ASAP since it draws TOO much attention from others curious in what you're doing. It'll get you up to 2-3 times your original reading speed in 7 days. You'll need additional material to continue advancing like "Mastering the Information Age" by Michael J. McCarthy. My book is in threads from continued use.
Rating:
Summary: Whets your appetite, but it's not enough
Review: The book was excellent in the sense that it gives you an appetite for developing speed-reading skills, but it doesn't take you very far. For example, why does the title have '7-Day' in it? Other than claiming that it will double your reading speed in a week, it has nothing to do with 7 days. One would think from the title that the book is setup as a set of exercises - one for each day. Anyhow, in favour of the book - it did increase my reading speed by more than 50% almost immediately after starting it, which is what it claimed it would do. However, there are only 3 speed-reading drills in the book - I had hoped for more testing and practice drills. If you want an intro to speed reading, study skills, and test taking - buy this book. It goes into academic skills quite a bit. However, if you're looking for a book solely on speed-reading, consider another one.
Rating: 
Summary: Unhelpful
Review: The reason i wanted to buy this book was because i saw people give this book 5 out of 5 stars. Some methods that are discussed are very vague i.e. learn to read vertically, learn to read 3-4 lines of the first half of the sentence by dividing the book into rectangles. After the every method, the author tells you a story of how a particular student that was doing very poorly in school learned to be an A student after taking the Evelyn Wood seminar. you'll end up reading success stories every time she gives you a method to use, trust me. How exactly are these stories suppose to help you speed read. She also gives you a very interesting story of a young boy that is able to read so fast, that he actually sees the images. She also mentions how an instructor can read 4,000-6,000 words per minute, that's 100 words per second, this comment is exactly 222 words long that means that you have to be able to read this whole comment in less than 2.25 seconds. If you don't trust me please buy the book and you'll see for yourself. After you read the book i'll promise you that the name "Evelyn Wood" will be burned into you mind, since the author brings up her name constantly.
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