The Art of Slow Reading

The art of easy development Patrick Kingsley If youre construe this article in print, chances atomic number 18 youll only get through half of what Ive written. And if youre reading this online, you might non even finish a fifth. These are the dickens findings from two recent research projects, which both suggest that many of us no longer ware the ducking to read articles through to their conclusion. The problem doesnt just stop there academics report that we are proper less attentive book-readers, in any case. So are we getting stupider?Is that what this is about? Sort of. According to The Shallows, a current book by technology sage Nicholas Carr, our hyp durationctive online habits are damaging the mental faculties we need to appendage and understand lengthy textual information. Round-the-clock impudents feeds leave us hyperlinking from unmatched article to the near without necessarily engaging fully with any of the content our reading is frequently interrupted by t he run into of the latest email and we are now absorbing short bursts of words on Twitter and Facebook to a greater extent regularly than longer texts.Because of the internet, we have become very good at collecting a spacious range of information, notwithstanding we are also gradually forgetting how to sit back, contemplate, and relate all these facts to each other. understood reading? Youre probably in a dwindling minority. But no matter a literary revolution is at hand. First we had behind food, then slow travel. Now, those campaigns are joined by a slow-reading movement a disparate bunch of academics and intellectuals who want us to take our time part reading, and re-reading.They ask us to switch off our computers every so often and rediscover both the comfort of personal engagement with printed texts, and the ability to process them fully. Lancelot Fletcher, the first present-day author to popularise the term slow reading, argues that slow reading is not so much about un leashing the readers creativity, as uncovering the authors. And while Fletcher used the term initially as an academic tool, slow reading has since become a more wide-ranging concept.Slow reading, like slow food, is now, at root, a localist idea which burn help connect a reader to his neighbourhood. Slow reading is a community event restoring connections amidst ideas and people. The continuity of relationships through reading is experienced when we borrow books from friends when we read long stories to our kids until they fall asleep. But our eras technological diarrhea is bringing more and more slow readers to the fore. Keith Thomas, the Oxford history professor, is one much(prenominal) reader.He doesnt see himself as part of a wider slow community, but has nevertheless recently written about his bewilderment at the hasty reading techniques in contemporary academia. I dont think using a search engine to find certain key words in a text is a substitute for reading it properly, he says. You dont get a proper sense of the work, or understand its context. The words of the writer, suggests sage Nicholas Carr, act as a throttle valve in the mind of the reader, inspiring new insights, associations, and perceptions. And, perhaps even more significantly, it is only through slow reading that great literature can be cultivated in the future. As Carr writes, the very creation of the attentive, critical reader provides the spur for the writers work. It gives the author the confidence to explore new forms of expression, to grandness difficult and demanding paths of thought, to venture into uncharted and sometimes hazardous territory. The internet is probably part of the problem. It accustoms us to new ways of reading and looking and consuming. It fragments our attention span in a way thats not ideal if you want to read.The real issue with the internet may be that it erodes, slowly, ones sense of self, ones capacity for the kind of pleasure in isolation that readin g has, since printed books became common, been standard. Whats to be done, then? Most slow readers realise that total rejection of the web is extremely unrealistic, but many matte that temporary isolation from technology was the answer. Some people have advocated turning their computer off for one day a week. But, given the pace at which most of us live, do we even have time? Some people think the iPad might just be the answer.Its pleasant and fun, and doesnt remind people of work. But, for the true slow reader, theres simply no substitute for finicky aspects of the paper book the binding of a book captures an experience or idea at a particular space and time. And even the act of storing a book is a pleasure. Personally, Im not sure I could ever go offline for long. Even while writing this article I was flicking constantly between sites, skimming too often, absorbing too little internet reading has become too ingrained in my daily life for me to change.I read essays and articles n ot in hard copy but as PDFs, and Im more comfortable churning through lots of news features from several(prenominal) outlets than just a few from a single print source. I suspect that many readers are in a similar position. But if, like me, you just occasionally want to read more slowly, help is at hand. You can download a computer application called Freedom, which allows you to read in love-in-idleness by cutting off your internet connection. Or if you want to remove adverts and other distractions from your screen, you could always download offline reader Instapaper for your iPhone. If youre still reading, that is.