Or, you may say that this business of marking books is going to slow up your reading. It probably will. That's one of the reasons for doing it. Most of us have been taken in by the notion that speed of reading is a measure of our intelligence. There is no such thing as the right speed for intelligent read-ing. Some things should be read quick-ly and effortlessly, and some should be read slowly and even laboriously. The sign of intelligence in reading is the ability to read different things dif-ferently according to their worth.

Since speed-reading has become a national fad, this new edition of How to Read a Book deals with the prob­lem and proposes variable-speed-reading as the solution, the aim being to read better, always better, but sometimes slower, sometimes faster.

As Pascal observed three hundred years ago, "When we read too fast or too slowly, we under­stand nothing."

A better formula is this : Every book should be readno more slowly than it deserves, and no more quickly than youcan read it with satisfaction and comprehension.

the primarytask-recognized as such by all speed reading courses-is tocorrect the fixations and regressions that slow so many readersdown

Most of us have been taken in by the notion that speed of reading is a measure of our intelligence. T