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Rating: 
Summary: A Decent Attempt; Yet A Poorly Written Book
Review: For all the people who are looking to improve their academic skills, stay away from this book. Although the Princeton Review is a great company that has helped me pass many standardized tests (I.E. AP Tests and SAT II tests), this book does not follow up to the quality that other books in their series have. I bought this book hoping to make my summer reading easier and more enjoyable, yet this book (Reading Smart) did the complete opposite. It decreased my levels of comprehension significantly and barely increased speed. The exercises were a drudgery. Although the book tried to feature interesting examples, they did not turn out to be so.I am going to try to return this book and get some money or store credit for this book. For all prospective buyers of this book, I have some advice. I would suggest that instead of buying this book, you spend your money on something that you enjoy for the same price. This could be a music CD, video, or great book that you want. It will be much more enjoyable to do that than to try to improve yourself on this technique merely from a book. This is not to say that self-improvement techniques don't work, just that this particular book was not that great. I am going to look for other ways to improve myself academically through possibly audio tapes or other alternative methods of improvement. -Thank You for Reading My Passage and Good Luck for Anybody Who Seeks Self Improvement
Rating: 
Summary: Major on reading smart -minor on speed reading
Review: I bought this book thinking it was a speed reading book. I quickly found that it describes the different styles of writing and how to dig the information I need out of a piece of writing. Some speed reading basics are covered. How to read newspapers, poems, short stories. How to question the source of the writing, what the author is trying to communicate. Is it an opinion or a fact? A must read for beginning students and those starting research. A great place to start for those going back to school like me.
Rating: 
Summary: Ok, but leaves some to be desired
Review: Reading Smart is a book intended to help people develop their reading skills, including preparation, speed, and retention. While the book indeed was right that teachers tend to just teach us to read properly but not well creating a need for education directed at improving reading skills, I felt this book came up a little short in that area.
Reading smart does indeed have some good ideas, but it tends to state them at the beginning and then repeats them and rides them for the rest of the book. Ideas like marking up your book, prereading, think about why you are reading the selected text, what do you want to take away from it, etc. There is a speed reading chapter, however while I found the idea to be accuracte, I found the amount of text and practice to be inadequate.
The exercises were quite painful.... as in painfully boring. The text selected for the exercises was from areas that I was not in the least bit familar with (Art, Politics, etc) which I found caused my comprehension to be lower than normal. However it is still important to be able to read uninspiring material and be able to retain the material. However I really didn't want to practice that in succession with improving retention, speed, etc.
While I think this is a good book to read, I would have trouble saying that this is definitely a MUST read. It has some good tools but I would look for a book with a more complete set of areas and corresponding material. 3 out of 5 stars.
Rating:
Summary: Reading Smart
Review: Reading smart was a great book. The book described different techniques on how to read differing types of literature from short stories to plays to articles. It's well written segment on how to use fixations and saccades to read faster has greatly improved my own reading speeds. But it's most helpful asset was its segment on reading comprehension. My levels increased from 50% to 90% and that was a great, GREAT surprise. For results, I suggest this book.
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