Found this great post: http://ideamatt.blogspot.com/2006/02/how-to-read-lot-of-books-in-short-time.html. Title says it all.

It’s a summary of various methods from knowledge management, tips & tricks regarding how to process information quickly (well, how to parse it through the brain and only act on the important bits).

It sure isn’t novel-reading, it assumes text is just applicable information. One could ask the question if these methods, gathered by Matt Cornell, should properly be called ‘reading’ at all.

I use texts like this:
1. look at index, glossary, contents
2. quick look at a few passages, read conclusion
3. go read the book or part of the book, [or put away]; tag sentences with post-its
4. type (or copy-paste) (selection of) tagged sentences in blogpost, voodoopad or texteditor, for future use.

Does it work? I don’t know. What really counts is what I remember. And that process isn’t so one-dimensional. But I am happy with post-it-tagged books, and I can find quotes quicker now, and sometimes I remember texts better than I used to.

Btw: the methods mentioned by Matt Cornell also explain why I find it impossible to ‘properly’ read business books: too many superfluous sentences, too many skippable examples, everything get repeated. Those books are written for speed-reading.