READING

A whizz with words
Daily Telegraph

Despite becoming the subject of more books than she probably ever read, it is Marilyn Monroe who most accurately expresses my ideal reading state. In the song Lazy, she invokes a luxuriously languid day in which she stretches out, yawning, under a "honey lake" of a sky, "With a great big valise full of books to read / Where it's peaceful / And I'm quarantined… being laaaaaaaa-zzzyyyy." And yet, for too many of us, reading has become a rushed affair.

No honey lake skies open up as we gobble down the latest John Grisham or Jonathan Franzen. Books must be polished off before we reach our train station, before the book club next meets, or before they are due back to the library. And there are so many prize-winning, shortlisted and shockingly-pipped-at-the-post masterpieces on which we are expected to have opinions that bibliophiles seem to exist in a perpetual state of guilt over what remains unread or partially digested.

But this isn't a modern paranoia. In the 19th century, John Stuart Mill's contemporaries must have felt a similar pang when he claimed that he could read faster than he could turn pages. The American commentator HL Mencken boasted that he could breeze through a 250-page work within an hour, and it is said that Theodore Roosevelt somehow found time to devour two or three books a day while he was in office.

These people might have been regarded as freakishly fast readers had not a schoolteacher called Evelyn Wood "discovered" speed-reading shortly after the Second World War. Ever since, we have been bombarded with advertisements chiding us for not acquiring the revolutionary technique that could make Roosevelts of us all.

Wood was a student in Utah when she got the idea. She submitted an 80-page paper to her professor and watched in amazement as he read and graded it in under 10 minutes. His "untrained" reading rate was a dizzying 2,500 words per minute, although he could not explain how he did it. Over the next two years, Wood rooted out 50 people of all sorts of backgrounds and ages – from teenagers to an octogenarian – who could read at between 1,500 and 6,000 words per minute, and understand and remember what they had read. By studying their habits, she found that they absorbed more than one word at a time, seeing words in meaningful patterns as they guided their gaze smoothly down the page. Wood taught herself to speed-read by watching them, and in 1959 she opened the first Evelyn Wood Institute in Washington DC.

A Wood course begins by getting readers to follow words along the page by pointing at them, and gradually opening up the field of vision until the reader is taking in pages in widescreen. It sounds like an exercise undertaken by a character in John Irving's novel A Prayer for Owen Meany. He is advised that "instead of following the elusive next word with my finger… I should highlight a spot on the page by reading through a hole cut in a piece of paper. It was a small rectangle, a window to read through; I moved the window over the page – it was a window that opened no higher than two to three lines. I read more comfortably than I had ever read with my finger; to this day I read through such a window."

According to the Evelyn Wood Institute, the average person reads between 200 and 400 words a minute. "By at least tripling your reading speed," it claims, "you would possess a much wider and more flexible range of reading rates and experience for the first time the thrill of dynamic comprehension. It is like watching a movie. As Mrs Wood said after reading a book set in the rain forests of Brazil, 'It was, oh, so wonderful. I had no direct awareness of reading, but I could see the trees, smell the warm fragrances of the forest, feel the touch of the vines and leaves against my skin, hear those magnificent bird melodies. Reading this new way enables me to project myself into the experience, not just read about it.' "

I am not sure that Wood's comments add much credibility. She may have smelled the rainforest, but what was the book about? Did she gain any real grasp of plot, character, prose and theme, or did the 'dynamic comprehension' simply give her the flavour of a dish that would never nourish her more deeply? Her response to the South American novel reminds me of Woody Allen's joke: "I took a speed-reading course and read War and Peace in 20 minutes. It involves Russia."

In his Telegraph column last month, Andrew Marr blithely referred to his annual winter ritual of a "swim" through War and Peace. I hoped it was a joke. As the BBC's political correspondent, Marr appears on our television sets most evenings, offering insight into the latest 250-page government report, or the polysyllabic findings of an independent inquiry. He also presents Radio 4's Start the Week programme every Monday morning, on which he cheerily discusses books on politics, literature, science and philosophy with their authors. He also reviews new books for this newspaper. Surely the War and Peace ritual was a joke? It was not.

When I spoke to Marr, he was on his way back from the World Economic Forum in Davos with Tolstoy on his knee. "I just do read fast," he says. "If I'm reading books where I'm already familiar with the argument, I'll certainly concentrate more on the middle of the page than on the edges, but I do make an effort to read every page. Unless something has gone horribly wrong, then if somebody comes on Start the Week I will have read the book."

He doesn't think that speed-reading is especially virtuous, just a useful tool in his profession. He acknowledges different "gears" for different occasions and confesses that "the penalty for fast reading is quick forgetting. People say to me, 'Gosh, you read so much, you must know so much,' and I say, 'Only up a point'."

Professor John Stein of Oxford University's Sensorimotor Control Lab and Dyslexia Unit agrees. "Most speed-read material isn't committed to long-term memory," he says, "unless there is some incentive to store that information. Temporary information – things like seven-digit phone numbers we only need for a morning – pass through the working memory."

Slow readers can take comfort in the fact that there's an awful lot of brain activity involved in the reading process. Stein explains that "it all happens in the cortical [top] part of the brain. You have an auditory system that needs to detect the different sounds and a visual system to detect the different forms of the letters. The visual side of things starts in the occipital [back] cortex, which moves forward to meet the auditory information that's coded just in front of your ears in the temporal cortex. They meet at the angular gyrus.

"Speed-readers work by training their eyes to scan and pick up key words. They have a template in the mind of the visual structure of words they are looking for and they don't read the other words. If you present them with a completely new passage on a subject about which they have no previous knowledge then they wouldn't be much faster than you or I. It's perhaps controversial of me to say this, but in my opinion they're not really 'reading'. They're picking up the gist."

The beautiful phrases Stein uses – "angular gyrus", "occipital cortex", "parietal lobe" – make me want to savour their sounds as I struggle to make scientific sense of them. I feel sorry for the world's fastest reader, Howard Berg, who claims to scoff down 25,000wpm. That's binge reading, surely?

Instead, I find myself envying those the psychoanalytical thinker James Strachey refers to as "sotto voce" readers, "persons who, though not reading aloud, always say every word to themselves as they go on", forever hindered by "abortive movements of the tongue and lips". As Mary Jacobus argues in Psychoanalysis and the Scene of Reading: "The `hindrance' of an auditory imagination is an essential ingredient in poetic pleasure and even understanding."

Simon Armitage seconds that. He says that, as a poet, he does read slowly, measuring words and syllables against each other, seeking musicality. "I think you get used to reading in the way you write. Poetry happens all over the place," he says, "and as a poet I'm always wondering what to pinch." For a literary type, Armitage doesn't read many novels. "Only about 20 a year now," he says, "and I always feel I don't read them properly. I'm sure I skim."

Those who have to read vast amounts of fiction find it a struggle. The MP Chris Smith, who chaired last year's panel of Man Booker prize judges, found the experience "a nightmare". "I've just whizzed through Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code, which is a great thriller. But when the writing is really good, as it was for books we read last year, like David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, then I really want to slow down and savour every word. The reading ate up my whole summer. I went on holiday, and while everybody else was out for lunch, seeing the sights and wandering the galleries, I was stuck in a hotel room with a suitcase of books."

As Marr stresses, it is all about finding the right pace for the right situation. Peter Jacobs of Rapid Reading, who teaches speed-reading seminars for professionals, says that the skills he hones are designed only to help us navigate the vast tracts of information we have to deal with at work. His aim is to help us save time, avoid the junk of badly written documents and fish out the bits we need. He has also given seminars for librarians with a limited amount of time to choose which books to stock. "They should be able to make that choice in under a minute," he says. "A bit of skimming and scanning – taking in samples of prose like pondwater."

He talks to me about the fact that the tops of lower case letters tell us most of what we need to know. He says that if most readers can process one word at a time there's no reason the eye can't expand that to three or four. He also reminds me that many people had bad experiences of reading at school, and that fear of the written word prevents those people absorbing the information they need at speeds that would make them most effective. But he doesn't believe skimming and scanning techniques should influence reading for pleasure.

"Mariella Frostrup wanted me to go on Radio 4 and speed-read War and Peace," he sighs, "and Woody Allen was right. That's just a joke."

NBA

I watched the Raptors lose last night in Air Canada Centre. I haven't missed the NHL for one second this winter. I hope it leaves the newspapers for six months. Can't wait for baseball season. My favourite NBA players:

Steve Nash
Andrei Kirilenko
Jermaine O'Neal
Dirk Nowitzki
Yao Ming
Stephon Marbury

FILM

Nobody Knows

Hirokazu Kore-eda is the Japanese director whose breakthrough movie, After-Life, is gradually assuming cult status. It is a fantasy based on the idea that, after your death, you are asked to recall the most purely happy moment in your life so that it can be eternally re-created for your enjoyment. His follow-up, Distance - at Cannes in 2001 - was widely considered disappointing. However, his latest film, Nobody Knows (in Japanese, Daremo Shirinai) is a satisfying reminder of this director's talent for extending a single moment with superbly poised artistry.

Keiko is a single mum with four kids by different fathers, played here by the Japanese columnist and TV personality known simply as You. Flaky and irresponsible, she effectively sub-contracts parental duties to her eldest boy, 12-year-old Akira (Yuya Yagira) while she takes off with various boyfriends for days at a time. And then one day she simply never comes back, leaving Akira quite alone with his little sisters Kyoko (Ayu Kitaura), Yuki (Momoko Shimizu) and brother Shigeru (Hiei Kimura).

Akira has to provide for them as best he can while concealing the situation from any adult authority, especially the landlord, who is aware of only one child in their apartment. The others have had to be smuggled in, hiding in suitcases: a stratagem that is recalled in the movie's terrifying and heart-stoppingly sad ending.

Kore-eda patiently tracks the children's secret existence as un-adult adults, minute by minute, with gentleness and acute observation. They do not become feral, but maintain, with a weird and moving dignity, the best semblance of family life possible as their flat becomes more and more run down. They are four souls alone in their own universe, abandoned and unloved like believers whose Creator has turned his back on them. Kore-eda gets miraculously fresh performances from the children and the film is absorbing, humane and deeply moving.



TREES

Be sure to read the quiet, contemplative article on redwood trees in this week's New Yorker. It profiles Professor Steve Sillett’s research in the canopy of old-growth redwood forests. It describes his efforts as the first scientist to map the canopy that the 2000-year-old redwoods create. (On July 30, 2000, an amateur redwood researcher discovered what is currently believed to be the world’s tallest tree, now measuring 372 feet, 2 inches. It is currently growing roughly four inches taller a year. Crazy.)



MARRIAGE

Worthwhile article in this week's Boston Globe about the tough first year of marriage:
I Do. Now What?

INNOVATION: HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW'S ANNUAL LIST

As the breadth of this year's Harvard Business Review's List demonstrates, innovation comes in myriad forms. It can be, for instance, a new idea that resonates with familiar truth, such as anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson's suggestion that midlife sabbaticals would reinvigorate employees and ward off stagnation. Or it can be an old inspiration given fresh life, such as Professor Roderick Kramer's reminder that great leaders aren't afraid to flip-flop when change is the wisest course. Great ideas need time to develop. Rarely do they spring from deities' heads fully formed and suited up for battle. The brainstorming for these 20 began with a klatch hosted last summer by HBR and the World Economic Forum, and it continued through the fall, as several insights took on greater definition and others emerged.

1 Flipping Without Flopping
The 2004 U.S. presidential campaign made "flip-flop" a dirty word. Great leaders, though, understand that changing course is sometimes the smartest thing to do. The trick to pulling off a reversal? Prepare the ground well in advance, and cast correction as courage.

2 Everybody into the Gene Pool
Many managers eager to pursue ambitious growth strategies suspect that their organizations lack the right stuff to deliver. These leaders want desperately to crack the code of high-performance DNA. But performance anatomies are highly individual and delicately balanced. New research initiatives are making the je ne sais quoi of success more decodable, teachable, and learnable.

3 The Velcro Organization
When your customers are located around the world, it's not enough to have effective, efficient functions. You also need to know the people and relationships that make business work in particular locales. The rigid organizational structure of most multinationals gets in the way. "Velcro organizations" do better, with managers who can quickly and easily rearrange their roles to meet the challenges of specific tasks.

4 Demand-Side Innovation
Each new generation of products and services has half the shelf life of the previous one. To secure a lasting competitive advantage, try shifting your innovation efforts to the demand side. Ultimately, it's how companies orchestrate customer interactions, not just what firms bring to market, that determines whether they live or die.

5 You Heard It Here First
Although visual technology has about a 20-year jump on audio, the ears are coming into their own. Industries stand to benefit from a host of breakthroughs in sound. Music that influences which wines we buy? Billboards that talk to one person at a time? Believe the buzz.

6 Seek Validity, Not Reliability
Six Sigma, customer relationship management, and most other corporate systems crank out consistent results, often through analysis of objective data. The outcomes are reliable, but they don't necessarily mean much. Companies that aim for validity instead-by embracing fuzzy data, variability, and inconsistency--open the door to innovation and growth.

7 "When" Is the New "What"
Marketers spend so much time fretting over which people to target with what message that they largely ignore the question of when. Identifying when needs or desires change and determining when customers want help are the best ways to get through. "Dialogue" marketing helps companies spot the hot irons-and strike.

8 Swapping Your Country's Risks
How can investors in developing countries diversify their risks if capital controls prohibit them from exporting capital overseas? And how can their countries' governments diversify their economies without sinking billions into new industries? By creating an equity swap, which enables domestic and foreign investors to manage risks separately from investments.

9 Wanted: A Continuity Champion
Change is sexy, challenging, a job for heroes. It also has a way of swallowing a company's attention and resources. Continuity needs and deserves champions, too. The core business, after all, is what got you where you are.

10 Blog-Trolling in the Bitstream
Blogs have the grassroots credibility to influence what people think, do, and buy. Because the blogosphere doesn't rely on marketers as other media branches do, companies that want to tap into its selling power have to play by its rules.

11 No Risk Is an Island
Big man-made risks without owners--think of an agricultural disaster sparked by genetically modified food - render traditional risk management all but worthless. When assessing risks of this type, companies must involve a broad community that includes experts and all those who might feel the repercussions.

12 Let Them All Be Power Users
Companies load up employees with lap-tops, PDAs, cell phones, and other gadgets for managing personal information but give little guidance on how best to use them. The result? Knowledge workers, the drivers of the global economy, are far less effective than they could be.

13 A Taboo on Taboos
Organizations tiptoe around politically or socially risqué subjects-especially perennial cringe inducers like sex, death, and God. But if a subject makes you uncomfortable, chances are it's exactly what you should be discussing.

14 Toward a New Science of Services
Services contribute even more to the global economy than products do. So shouldn't the science of services be an academic field in its own right? Whether it becomes one may depend on the same criteria-including the extent of corporate support-that set computer science apart from engineering, math, and physics.

15 The Coming Crisis over Intellectual Property Rights
Although many executives recognize a deteriorating respect for intellectual property rights globally, few see the particular threat posed by recent developments in China. Companies there have started flooding the world's markets with pirated versions of everything from DVDs to airplane parts-and a national emphasis on fostering economic growth at any cost makes it hard to weed out corruption. To keep IPR protections intact, global firms must wake up and take action.

16 Biometrics Meets Services
Biometric devices that scan fingerprints, palms, retinas, and faces are already revolutionizing security. The killer app, however, may be locking in business, not locking out bad guys. Singapore Airlines has begun using biometrics to enhance customer service. Other companies could do the same, customizing and streamlining the way people buy clothing, health care, financial services-even a cup of coffee.

17 Getting Time on Your Side
People are living longer, so we picture them spending more time in retirement. That's the wrong way to look at longevity. Instead, we should capitalize on it, giving employees in midlife a year or two to renew their energy and pursue new passions. Many would return to their jobs motivated to embark on a second stage of high performance.

18 Inversion of Privacy
Europeans worry about corporate data surveillance. Americans worry more about government prying. And the young have fewer qualms than their elders about sharing consumer information. Companies wrestling with privacy issues take note: A single policy may never suit all.

19 In Praise of Feedership
It's easy to understand how corporate Darwinism works: Eat before you're eaten. A closer look at biology, though, shows parasitism to be a far more subtle wand cunning strategic model. Businesses would do well to take a lesson from the fig wasp.

20 Don't Believe Everything You Read (Except for This)
Publishers churn out around 3,500 business titles a year, and--wonder of wonders--not all of them offer good advice. Managers who can't afford to waste time on dreck need help navigating the ideas marketplace. Some rules of thumb: Be skeptical of anything touted as "new," keep an eye out for half-truths, and if someone calls himself a guru, run the other way.