My parents have taught me to read when I was three years old. Since then I'm a very fast reader. Until recently, I didn't even realize that I'm reading faster then many other people. If I can read uninterrupted, I usually finish a book within one day (or night). So I guess I read about one book per day.
I once went to a speedreading workshop and found out that my starting reading speed was close to what the people were supposed to achieve during the workshop. My speed didn't increase much at the end, but I've learned some skimming techniques that I use to read perodicals.
Also during this workshop I was trying to figure out what allows me to read this fast and I've realized that actually I do not see (do not perceive consciously) the individual words, much less letters. In fact, once I start looking at the page I see a movie. The books are like DVDs for my brains. Of course this works best with fiction. Non-fiction, technical texts tend to require some time to build up the necessary imagery, but after that - it's a movie again.
This agrees well with what I've heard at the speed-reading workshop. What they were doing is teaching the people to visualize the pictures behind the words. So that is what I suggest you do if you want to read faster. Read a sentence - imagine a movie scene that comes to your mind when you read the word. Then do the same for the next sentence and so on. It may take practice, but then you will learn to do see the images instead of letters. Reading will be much more fun, really.
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Ilya.
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