What was once an act of immersion has now become an exercise in evasion. There’s no time to linger or to contemplate because the screen is perpetually pushing us forward.
Enjoyed this piece Michael. I wholeheartedly concur. Slow reading has changed my life for the better. I look forward to more of your essays.
There are quite a few slow reading groups on Substack. I am leading a year-long journey through Homer's works, and Simon Haisell has been leading groups through classic books for several years now.
Thank you, Matthew. You are doing excellent work with slow reading here as well. Of course, the title of Michael's piece caught my eye. A rebellion indeed. I have gathered so many personal stories over the last three years from people who have taken the invitation to read slowly and found it can profoundly change how they engage with the world.
These are all good ideals aimed at creating quiet, reflective reading. But as a classical educator of 15 years in a variety of schools, I wonder how you've found these things to actually work in real classroom settings. For instance, without extremely fine and regular checking of annotations, most students have any number of ways to game that system to make it look like they're engaging with the book when they really aren't. (Try keeping up with the annotations for 25 to 28 students on a regular basis, and it's quickly seen how unworkable that system is.)
Likewise, for the teacher to stand in the front trying to model deep reading tends to take the teacher's eyes off the students, who then engage in all sorts of hijinks or who else simply check out because what they're actually hearing is "the Charlie Brown teacher". And that's before the teacher starts cold calling, at which point in time the teacher quickly realizes most "students" can't say anything meaningful about the text at all, no matter how much he himself has modeled closely reading it.
Timothy, great questions -- and there are some excellent answers for you. I will be addressing some of these in future articles. For now, I recommend The Close Reading Archive, which is filled with a great many tidbits of wisdom on the subject: https://www.closereadingarchive.org/teaching
That was an awesome introduction to how to change the pace of one’s life. Rushing through life is never helpful unless there is a real emergency. Reflection and thinking deeply takes time. Thanks Michael
I majored in philosophy because I was only able to read slowly. Now I choose to read slowly. Few things in life make me feel better than an hour of slow, calm, reading of a great text.
I find this once again very similar to Lectio Divina with its four steps: Lectio, Meditatio, Oratio and Contemplatio. We are now maxxing on the "Lectio" part, neglecting all the others. Since I put a brake on the reading race, I find myself pondering at the last piece I read, I keep popping more ideas and interpretations, things I imagine were "usual day at the office" not so long ago. The difficult part is managing the FOMO. The long reading lists knocking franticly at the door.
Great post and AMEN to all you say here. "It’s not about speed; it’s about presence. It’s about being in the text, not just getting through it" is well-said. Many people think that smart people read more quickly than others, but that's not true. People who read every day will get through more books in a year because they are devoted to reading. Imagine trying to rush through Henry James!
Not so sure I’d want to be immersed in a book on the NY subway, unless it was hardback War and Peace . . .
But seriously, reading deep for pleasure is a gift from God, because some of us have it warmly passed on to us by parents who read to us first. Others who did not develop a thirst for it on their own, and are more blessed for the effort. Either way, the blue screen kills us all.
Enjoyed this piece Michael. I wholeheartedly concur. Slow reading has changed my life for the better. I look forward to more of your essays.
There are quite a few slow reading groups on Substack. I am leading a year-long journey through Homer's works, and Simon Haisell has been leading groups through classic books for several years now.
Thank you, Matthew. You are doing excellent work with slow reading here as well. Of course, the title of Michael's piece caught my eye. A rebellion indeed. I have gathered so many personal stories over the last three years from people who have taken the invitation to read slowly and found it can profoundly change how they engage with the world.
These are all good ideals aimed at creating quiet, reflective reading. But as a classical educator of 15 years in a variety of schools, I wonder how you've found these things to actually work in real classroom settings. For instance, without extremely fine and regular checking of annotations, most students have any number of ways to game that system to make it look like they're engaging with the book when they really aren't. (Try keeping up with the annotations for 25 to 28 students on a regular basis, and it's quickly seen how unworkable that system is.)
Likewise, for the teacher to stand in the front trying to model deep reading tends to take the teacher's eyes off the students, who then engage in all sorts of hijinks or who else simply check out because what they're actually hearing is "the Charlie Brown teacher". And that's before the teacher starts cold calling, at which point in time the teacher quickly realizes most "students" can't say anything meaningful about the text at all, no matter how much he himself has modeled closely reading it.
Timothy, great questions -- and there are some excellent answers for you. I will be addressing some of these in future articles. For now, I recommend The Close Reading Archive, which is filled with a great many tidbits of wisdom on the subject: https://www.closereadingarchive.org/teaching
That was an awesome introduction to how to change the pace of one’s life. Rushing through life is never helpful unless there is a real emergency. Reflection and thinking deeply takes time. Thanks Michael
I majored in philosophy because I was only able to read slowly. Now I choose to read slowly. Few things in life make me feel better than an hour of slow, calm, reading of a great text.
I find this once again very similar to Lectio Divina with its four steps: Lectio, Meditatio, Oratio and Contemplatio. We are now maxxing on the "Lectio" part, neglecting all the others. Since I put a brake on the reading race, I find myself pondering at the last piece I read, I keep popping more ideas and interpretations, things I imagine were "usual day at the office" not so long ago. The difficult part is managing the FOMO. The long reading lists knocking franticly at the door.
Great post and AMEN to all you say here. "It’s not about speed; it’s about presence. It’s about being in the text, not just getting through it" is well-said. Many people think that smart people read more quickly than others, but that's not true. People who read every day will get through more books in a year because they are devoted to reading. Imagine trying to rush through Henry James!
Not so sure I’d want to be immersed in a book on the NY subway, unless it was hardback War and Peace . . .
But seriously, reading deep for pleasure is a gift from God, because some of us have it warmly passed on to us by parents who read to us first. Others who did not develop a thirst for it on their own, and are more blessed for the effort. Either way, the blue screen kills us all.
Michael, thank you for this post. I am a bibliophile, and retired educator. Well done.
Thank you, Richard!
Thanks, that F-pattern was really useful for reading the remainder of the article
The continuation of slow reading is the Zettelkasten. You read a book, you get inspired, then write your thoughts down and put them into Zettelkasten.
Then they lie there for weeks or months.
Then you read another book (or experience something) and ideas related to those older notes emerge.
You again put them into Zettelkasten.
Do this long enough and you come up with new, truly creative ideas.
(Which you can only come up with by thinking slowly, over weeks and months.)