Jump to: Reviews | The First Speed Reader

Read this. Then read this five times faster after your $45 Groupon gets you a speed reading class at Iris Reading (up to $300 value). Choose between a one-day five-hour class or a two-day, ten-hour class to break old reading habits across the knee with a spinning backbreaker and replace them with more effective techniques.

With strategies for reading technical material and speed-reading techniques on the computer, the course is perfect for business professionals. Iris's website says it has taught speed reading courses at Lehman Brothers, the former Wall Street investment bank, and HSBC, one of Europe’s largest banks. If your business's leaders can learn to read even faster than those wily Lehman Brothers, then you are more likely to avoid the kind of catastrophic fall from grace they experienced.

Speed reading is also great for students with heavy reading assignments, providing an excellent alternative to trucker speed. Iris is currently working with several Chicago Public Schools to help students learn more efficient reading skills. And undergrads at University of Wisconsin-Madison and Ohio State University successfully used Iris to spend less time on textbook reading and more time on speed-reading thousands of Facebook wall posts. Classes are held downtown in the Financial District at Le Meridien Hotel 333 Battery St. on Saturdays and Sundays; click here for dates and times.

The average person in the United States reads about one Groupon per minute (150–250 words per minute). Iris' website says most students finish the Iris Reading Program reading two–five times faster without losing comprehension. That means an exceptional student could end up reading five Groupons per minute. Iris' tagline is "reading at the speed of thought." Study hard, and if you achieve 80 kilowords per minute, Iris herself will give you a candy prize.

Reviews

Check out Iris Reading's website to view customer testimonials. Here are a few:

• Students have come to the workshops a little skeptical, but they all leave raving about what they learned and how they can use it. We have presented this workshop to all students from 1st years to graduate and professional, and they have all benefited.” – Kay Robinson, Assistant Director, Ohio Union, Ohio State University
• Thank you very much for all your help this year. You truly had a significant impact on my productivity as well as many others in Ariel’s research department. You should feel very proud of your contributions to Ariel. Thank you again.” 
– Jason Tyler, Portfolio Manager, Ariel Capital Management
• The experience and outcome was phenomenal! The average student in the class began reading 239 words per minute and ended reading 457 words per minute – results were nearly doubled. – Debra Carson, Program Coordinator, Chicago Summer Business Institute

The First Speed Reader

The first speed reader was born illiterate. Raised in the fields, the boy stumbled into the town library one day with a dream: to read and to do it fast. Six to eight weeks later the boy, now a man, was able to read a greasy diner menu just as fast as his fellow hayseeds. He lost his field accent, and began to read faster and faster...without losing comprehension. He once read War and Peace so fast it exploded. Word spread. Townsfolk challenged him to reading feats: reading underwater, reading blindfolded, reading while reading the newspaper. All the while he read faster, and more of what he liked.

One night the dam burst. A gushy wave threatened to engulf the entire town in bursty dam water. Because he had finished reading so quickly, the man had time to build a temporary dam in front of city hall, stopping tragedy with the authority of a tome's final punctuation.

That night he was elected mayor, and after a few drinks, governor. But he preferred to remain a humble officer of the library. That year he was given a proper name: Dewey Decimal, the first speed reader to break the thought barrier.