This is probably the best book that I've read on speed reading. In an earlier review, I suggested that Zorn's book, "Speed Reading," was the best. It is indeed a fine book. Kump's book, however, give a more realistic idea of the kind of work it takes to boost your reading speed. Other books give a smattering of exercises--often very good ones--without emphasizing the kind of practice that is necessary, or even that you won't necessarily be able to maintain high speeds across all types of reading material.
Kump uses familiar reading exercises, and variations on them. The lessons are brief, and each lesson contains short (10-15 minutes) exercises; at the end of each lesson, you are instructed to do a series of drills. Kump wants you to spend about a week on each series of drills, and to repeat them every day. They can take anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour or more a day, depending on how much time you are willing to spend. I've found most--but not all--drills useful. The ones that were not useful to me drilled on skills I already had (recognizing levels of specificity within paragraphs, for instance).
Here's an example of one particularly useful drill. Kump has you read for 2 minutes, as fast as you can with comprehension. Then you read the same material again, trying to read a little faster, and a little further, in the same amount of time. And again. You do this four times. A variation of this is to read for 1 minute, then a little faster for another minute, and then to "practice read" (i.e., move your eyes quickly across the words, without worrying about comprehension) twice the longest passage in the same amount of time. Then you practice read three times the original (that is, the longest of the first two 1-minute drills) in one minute.
One REALLY nice thing about this book is that Kump has you use your own reading material, your own books. Other books include selections for you to practice with, most of which are tedious, simplistic, or just too brief. Kump's exercises work, and you can read your own books while you practice.
