Speed Reading by Kam Knight | Book Review

★

There were some sticking points with me

First were the continued contradictions.

Here are some examples:
​      If it's important, be thorough. If you're familiar with the subject, skim it.
      Preview the text, unless reading for pleasure.
​      It's possible to speed read without previewing, but comprehension will suffer.
      Race over the familiar, slow down for the new stuff.
​
The author then makes a lot of assertions about doing tons of research or mentions techniques such as "chunking" (which I KNOW he did not invent), yet the only thing at the end of this book is an add for another of his books...so the stars started dropping off. No citations on who to thank for all of the knowledge crammed in this book. But I can tell you this, a lot of the "techniques" that he mentions in this book date as far back as the 50s by a woman named Evelyn Wood. In fact, a lot of what is written in this text mirrors Wood's techniques, yet as with all of the other information written here, no one but the author is credited. So, I continued to deduct more stars.

​Moving on -- the author claims that he invented, after tons of research, the technique of "looking at the spaces between every 3-4 words". He then provides a sort of test to the reader, after which he declares "Amazing, right?" Yet, I found nothing amazing in reading the presented paragraph. I read through it quickly, reading each word. Then I attempted it using his technique of reading between the spaces (or something like that). I wasn't impressed. Also, as I was reading, I noticed that a lot of his ideas are to preview, skim bold/highlighted text, read table of contents, all to prep the mind and get an idea of what the text is about ahead of time. Again, not his idea.

I read on and got to the section on peripheral vision, I actually started getting irritated by this point because I realized that he literally was borrowing every technique ever invented and regurgitating it in his book without crediting a single solitary source. I will state here that I did do some research of my own and discovered that scientists at the University of California, San Diego (see how I cited this?) concluded that utilizing your peripheral vision or other eye exercise techniques was "neither biologically or psychologically possible". But what REALLY got me was that he inserted THIS in his text: "Before moving on...I want to say I get plagiarized A LOT...(and) if that wasn't bad enough these copiers post malicious negative reviews on my book to boost their own sales..." and THAT is where I stopped reading. Why? Because of the arrogance and audacity to claim he's being plagiarized yet not a single idea in this book is unique to this author. He did not invent any of it and, I'll bet if we ran his text through a plagiarizing program it would be flagged repeatedly. He's got a lot of nerve.