How often do you sit down with a book of your choice, and
just read for a half hour or so? I’m not
talking about the common reading or the Aims
of Argument, great readings both. I
mean a book you find interesting to the point that you become engrossed. Do you do that? Did you ever used to do
that? I’m here to urge you to take up,
or rediscover, the habit of slow reading.
 |
| Thomas Newkirk, an English professor at University of New Hampshire, has written a book on slow reading. |
Slow, engrossed reading is not likely to happen when you’re
reading on a screen (except possibly the Kindle without the Fire). Screen reading trains the brain to do many
good things such as quickly focusing attention and making decisions about the
value or relevance of a web site or on-line article. Dr. Gary Small, Director of the Memory &
Aging Research Center at UCLA, praises the Internet for its ability to train
the brains of young and old, developing “neural circuitry that is customized
for rapid and incisive spurts of directed concentration.” That’s the good news
about screen reading.
But the downside is that the more we train our brains to
develop these circuits, the more likely we are to allow the pathways for more
traditional learning to lapse and diminish.
I’m talking now about the ability to concentrate for extended periods of
time, such as when reading a book. Even
older people who grew up loving books have lost their ability to read
deeply. Nick Carr wrote for The Atlantic magazine an article that
resonated with fellow former book worms.
He asked, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”
In one way, no; it gives us information, in fast, particle form. In another
way, yes; it makes us incapable of concentrating our attention. Now, he says, his concentration drifts after
two or three pages. He gets “fidgety, lose[s] the thread, begin[s] looking for
something else to do.” Sound familiar?
Because reading comprehension and people skills are so important
for school, work, and full development of human potential, we cannot allow
ourselves to become what playwright Richard Foreman describes as “pancake
people,” people who are wide with information but thin in knowledge and
relationship skills. The solution is to
start training our brains in the art of slow reading.
 |
| My niece Meredith learning to turn the pages. |
The benefits of slow
reading were reported in a Wall StreetJournal article this September:
better and longer concentration, reduced levels of stress (almost within
6 minutes of opening the book, subjects’ stress level went down), and “deepened
ability to think, listen, and empathize.”
Yes, reading, especially good fiction, improves people skills—but only
if you allow yourself to enter into the world of the characters and their
feelings. And a study by the National Endowment for the Arts similarly found “greater
academic, professional, and civic benefits associated with high levels of
leisure reading and reading comprehension.” The cause of these benefits remains
unexplained, but the correlation has been proven. Another correlation was found in the National
Endowment study between writing scores and reading for fun among high school
seniors. On a scale of 0-300, those who read every day averaged 165 (not great,
but we are talking average high school writers!) while those who never read
averaged 136 (considerably less great) on the writing test.
While it’s important to exercise and socialize in leisure
hours, I think most college students can work in 30 minutes a couple days a
week to do an activity that will reward them in so many ways. So when you have just a tiny block of time to
fill, put the phone or tablet away and pull out an interesting and well-written
book. A good choice might be any of the
ones that Highland Park High School banned (temporarily) from the senior
English lists: The Glass Castle, The
Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, or The Art of Racing in the Rain.
What books have made a reader out of you? Do you have recommendations?
