I often read word by word. And thus it takes me a long time to finish a book. Normally, I can read 2 books monthly. How many books do you read a month? And how do you read: do you skim it, or make notes as you read? And would you often check the dictionary if you come across vocabulary you don't know?
It relies on the story more than anything else. Some I burn through in a day, because it was just so good and I couldn't put it down. Some I like to savor like a fine wine and can take several months to finish. Only 1 had me run to the dictionary, and that was 50 Shades of wood, and I never finished it because I was board stiff. Though I read all the words, and it all is based on the story and enjoy-ability of it that really determines how I read. I know a few people who skim and can read 1000+ pages in a day. Me I try to enjoy the story ( or slog through if it is not that bloody awful).
Are we talking about fiction or nonfiction? I can't imagine taking notes on fiction--unless, of course, I'm doing it for a class. I don't skim, but I read fast enough that "word by word" doesn't feel like a description of how I read. I don't read nearly as much as I used to, but I'm faintly reassured that I just finished a novel in three days, two of them just in evenings, so apparently I do still read pretty fast when I do read. I very rarely look up a word when reading; if I don't know a word I usually get the meaning from context. I will occasionally look up a word, or more often an idiomatic phrase, when writing, and may also Google it to see it used in sentences, to make sure that the context-based meaning that I've absorbed for it is correct.
I usually read way to fast, and thus end up missing a lot of important things, it's a bit of a problem
I can't remember last time I read something where I didn't understand a word. Sure, the book I listen to at the moment has some weird words which I think might be dialect or simply made up words - but they all make sense in their context, but no - I never stop reading to look a word up. Goes for both Swedish and English books. I don't read word by word, but I wouldn't call it skimming. I can't quite describe it because it's something my brain does on it's own and has for the past twenty years or so. I may not the most attentive reader, but I get the story, and that's whats usually important. ETA: I don't read too much now a days, but when I was a vivid reader I'd read at least a book a week.
Same, I kind of like read it in blocks. I don't need to take in the words in order to process the order. I also tend to not even see words that don't affect anything (the, of, a...) I read your post sort of the way I put it in bold. I really didn't see much of the words in between. For science, I tend to read much smaller blocks because information tends to be much denser and I usually stop and analyse equations if I can't immediately visualize them.
I can and do speed read fiction. I don't really have a book-per-month count since it depends on how long the book I'm working on is and how much time I get to read, but I do read fast. I can usually infer the meaning of words I don't know from context, but I have looked'em up a few times as an adult. In those cases it's more of a "Okay, I get the meaning in context, but what does it REALLY mean?" thing. And it's much easier now that I can just switch from kindle/whatever to google on my phone to do it, instead of having to put a book down, go into my mom's library, find the dictionary (someone probably forgot to reshelve it ...), look it up, go "ohhh, cool!", get distracted reading other definitions, eventually get back to my book and realize I've forgotten the definition of the word I first put it down to look up
I usually read fast as well, but I don't get too much time to read. I've been working on Dracula Since October
When I'm in practice, I read fairly quickly. I can go through 1,000+ pages in a day if I'm really enjoying the book. I generally go through about a book in three to four days, though, because I only have time to read when taking a bath and my family knows not to bug me.
As a not-so-avid reader, I tend to read word by word and it can create a clutter of information in my head. However, if I want to take it easy, I'll just skim then read 'selectively' even on fiction - that is, focus and relive the good quality scenes and parts of narrative and ignore other parts that are less interesting. I think this is an even legitimate way of 'reading well'.