how's your speed-reading skill?

I originally did this at 2X speed and could barely keep up. With the video running at normal speed, it was easier. That said, I'm not generally a speed reader even though I did speed-reading exercises way back in elementary school (with special projectors designed to force your eye to move rapidly across a trip of text). I usually read at a slow, leisurely pace not much faster than talking speed. This isn't great when you're in grad school and have to devour several whole books per semester. And these aren't Dr. Seuss: they're heavy, abstruse, complex books. Of course, the key in such cases is to know what, in those books, to read. I remember, back in high school, learning the trick of reading the first and last paragraph of every chapter, plus the first and last sentences of every paragraph. This is a decent technique if you're dealing with a good, organized writer. If, however, you're reading a French postmodernist or a German philosopher who writes in paragraph-long sentences, you're fucked.