Don't bother. Just read more. I've always read very fast, and I don't think it helps that much. My experience has been that reading quickly is reading carelessly, which serves well for scanning and finding info - but to understand, you have to slow down and make metaphors, pictures in your head, or work with pencil, paper (or programming tools!)
Yeah, that's why I excluded "technical" materials. You have to read those with pencil&paper and/or a terminal. However, I think there would be some benefit in being able to read things like novels or simple non-fiction quickly.
Only if they're bad novels. When I read (good) novels, I'm constantly trying to slow myself down - to the point of literally mouthing the words or forcing myself to linger five minutes on a page. It takes so much longer to _feel_ a novel than it does to intellectually take in what's going on - so if I read too fast I end up knowing what happened, but not having experienced the novel.
As somebody pointed out on the 'heroes' thread, fiction often has a very high information content - it's just buried in symbolism and multiple meanings and the like.
Yeah, I hear you. One thing I do in that regard is make liberal use of mp3s, to listen to lectures, novels, nontechnical stuff (although I am listening to the complete Feynman Lectures on mp3!). It's an easy way to make use of time like commuting, waiting, etc....and I probably get through a half dozen books or so like that a month.
