A valuable collection of thought-provoking strategies to strengthen reading muscles.
McMaster presents a program for enhanced reading speed and comprehension.
The author, an investor and writer, breaks down the process of reading and outlines a handful of methods designed to increase reading speed and efficiency. He astutely acknowledges the huge role reading plays in our society—studies have found that the average person is spending more time than ever reading every day—Americans were found to spend about five hours a day reading (averaging only 16 minutes of daily reading for pleasure). People are swamped with emails and links in their newsfeeds as workplaces require employees to process more and more material. McMaster wants to stress to his more conscientious readers that the kinds of speed-reading he’s advocating do not amount to skimming. The methods discussed here are not to be thought of as “cheating”; the author asserts that these approaches, based on both science and common sense, strengthen the very process of reading. Some of his advice is based on research data, such as the number of eye movements required to read a standard page of prose (as many as 48,000 such movements for a 200-page book). He also discusses the concept of “eye span,” which is developed over the first few years of school and refers to the number of letters or words a person can see at one time. Increasing eye span, he writes, involves a process called “grouping,” in which the reader learns to take in standard phrases at one glance: “The trick is to get your brain and eye to recognize ‘at your earliest convenience,’ or any phrase you like, as one so-called character.” McMaster also proposes using a “tracker” of some kind—a card, a pencil, a finger—to draw the gaze steadily down the printed page. These practices (like the rest of his advice) are designed to bring the reading process completely under the reader’s control.
The pace throughout is necessarily brisk and informative. Though there’s a good deal of compelling research-based insight into the “nuts and bolts” of how the reading eye extracts information from the page, the main strength of McMaster’s book is its practical approach to the activity itself rather than an analysis of its mechanics, though his arguments for the benefits of reading text laid out in multiple columns on a single page is intriguing. Most of his book is very different from the kinds of short cuts most speed-reading plans offer—time and again, he insists on one core demand: no multitasking. “If you aren’t giving reading your full attention, you’re not doing it as well as you could be,” he writes. “The better you keep your attention on your reading, the better you read.” The author also stresses the importance of making reading a routine and setting gradually increasing reading goals (crucially, he urges his readers to refrain from subvocalizing, avoiding “sounding out” words they’re reading). McMaster delivers all of this in lean, no-nonsense prose designed, fittingly, to be read and understood quickly. Readers at any skill stage will find some engaging ideas and advice in these pages. A valuable collection of thought-provoking strategies to strengthen reading muscles.Pub Date: April 19, 2023
ISBN: 9798987533352
Page Count: 124
Publisher: DTS Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.
In which the veteran humorist enters middle age with fine snark but some trepidation as well.
Mortality is weighing on Sedaris (Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002, 2017, etc.), much of it his own, professional narcissist that he is. Watching an elderly man have a bowel accident on a plane, he dreaded the day when he would be the target of teenagers’ jokes “as they raise their phones to take my picture from behind.” A skin tumor troubled him, but so did the doctor who told him he couldn’t keep it once it was removed. “But it’s my tumor,” he insisted. “I made it.” (Eventually, he found a semitrained doctor to remove and give him the lipoma, which he proceeded to feed to a turtle.) The deaths of others are much on the author’s mind as well: He contemplates the suicide of his sister Tiffany, his alcoholic mother’s death, and his cantankerous father’s erratic behavior. His contemplation of his mother’s drinking—and his family’s denial of it—makes for some of the most poignant writing in the book: The sound of her putting ice in a rocks glass increasingly sounded “like a trigger being cocked.” Despite the gloom, however, frivolity still abides in the Sedaris clan. His summer home on the Carolina coast, which he dubbed the Sea Section, overspills with irreverent bantering between him and his siblings as his long-suffering partner, Hugh, looks on. Sedaris hasn’t lost his capacity for bemused observations of the people he encounters. For example, cashiers who say “have a blessed day” make him feel “like you’ve been sprayed against your will with God cologne.” But bad news has sharpened the author’s humor, and this book is defined by a persistent, engaging bafflement over how seriously or unseriously to take life when it’s increasingly filled with Trump and funerals.
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-39238-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
PROFILES
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