From an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.
I was not impressed with this. I'm not saying it can't work, only that I'm very skeptical, and that what works for the author may not be universally applicable. Some of the techniques used are pretty obvious, and are probably in use by thinking readers already. Others seemed problematical, and though I tried employing them, they did not seem work for me. It begs the obvious question: if this is so good and so effective, then why isn't it being widely adopted in schools and colleges
I also did not trust the references this author gives, some of which are not to scientific studies but to some other guy's book. When I did track down one study that was referenced, it really wasn't applicable - not in the way this author was trying to claim it was. It was a controlled study in a set of school districts that used slide projections, and claimed only a modest subsequent improvement in reading and comprehension, and then only over longer texts. There was no significant improvement over the control group when it came to shorter texts, so this felt dishonest to me and made me question whether the author had actually read the study - or whether he'd just speed read it and misunderstood it because he'd read it too fast for comprehension!
There is a big difference in meeting the stated claim "Learn to Read a 200+ Page Book in 1 Hour" when applied to a simple work of fiction, and when attempting to apply that to a more complex work, or to a textbook, so I have no faith in the efficacy of the techniques described here except perhaps in some limited applications. Even the author admits his method has limitations, so on balance I can't commend this as a worthy read.
