The more you know, the more you can skip over when reading a book. A larger vocabulary of both words and concepts allows you to understand the ideas behind the words more efficiently. Not having to stop and look a word up in a dictionary has obvious speed advantages. The next time you get bogged down while learning a new topic, keep the faith that as you move down this curve, learning will get easier at an increasing rate. It's the beginning that is the tough part.
Audiotapes lend themselves well to the review process.
Because they can be listened to in the car, it is much easier to listen to a tape several times than it is to read a book several times. Such tapes are available in public libraries and can be inexpensively rented at some book and video stores.