Skill

To be fair to Masaru Sato, a small but critical part of his book is about the technique of reading - and it is very well written.

The theory of Sato is simple. First, one has to distinguish between reading well (熟讀術) and reading quick (速讀術). Second, one needs a considerable background knowledge to be able to read fast and comprehend. If you do not have the necessary background, there is no point to flip through the pages quickly - you are merely projecting images to the retina.

The most insightful and important observation of Sato is, except for a few exceptionally gifted, most of us cannot remember the content by reading a book just once. For that reason, we must develop a system to read a book at least twice (the actual advise of Sato is to read it three times) if our judgement is the book should be read well. The result (in terms of retaining information) is much better to read a book quickly for a few times than to read it once slowly and thoroughly.

The analogy is simple: It is more warm to wear three thin T shirts than a thick one.

Go read A Hundred Thousands of Why (十萬個為什麼).