When we read a book, we hardly think about the process of reading itself. For example, few of us guess that fast reading is more productive than the usual, slow reading. In any case, reading books is good for all people, and I present to you 18 interesting facts about reading:

1. While reading, your eyes look in different directions.
2. When reading, almost 50% of the time a person’s eyes look at different letters. The lines of sight can both diverge in different directions as well as cross.
3. 95% of people read very slowly – 180-220 words per minute (1 page in 1.5-2 minutes).
4. There is less eye fatigue when reading quickly than when reading slowly.
5. Comprehension level in traditional reading is 60%, in fast reading it is 80%.
6. During an hour the reader’s eyes are fixed on the text for 57 minutes, i.e. they are in relative rest.
7. When reading, the reader’s eyes, looking at different letters, transmit a different image, but the brain still combines them into one picture.
8. Eyes of man with average reading skills make 12-16 stops on one book line, while fast reader’s eyes make 2-4 stops.
9. A traditionally reading person has a one-step fixation of 10 print characters (that is 1.5-2 words of one line). A fast reader has 200-500 characters (that is, 33-83 words of several lines).
10. Slow reading has 0.5-0.7 unreasonable returns to reading per line.
11. Students have 20 regressions per line; students have 15.
12. Traditional reading loses 1/6th of the time spent on regressive eye movements.
13. Napoleon read at the rate of 2,000 words per minute.
14. Balzac read a 200 page novel in half an hour.
15. Someone named E. Gaon remembered verbatim 2,500 books he had read.
16. T. Edison read two or three lines at a time, memorizing the text by pages, thanks to maximum concentration.
17. Steven Bloomberg, one of the most famous bibliocleptomaniacs, stole 23,000 rare books from 268 libraries in order to build up his collection, estimated at about 20 million dollars. Bloomberg used a variety of methods, sometimes sneaking into a library through a vent or an elevator shaft.
18. The longest team read-aloud marathon lasted 224 hours and was completed by a team of six at the Mas Mall in Paysandú, Uruguay, September 13-22, 2007.