Slow Reading
by Carl Honoré · June 19, 2010
Remember that old Woody Allen joke? “I took a speed reading course. We read War and Peace. It’s about Russia.”
Sounds horribly familiar, doesn’t it? These days we skim through thousands of words a day at high speed. But how much of that ‘reading’ do we actually take in? Or enjoy?
The bottom line is that faster isn’t always better. You don’t gulp down a glass of fine wine. You don’t put Mozart on fast-forward. Sure, there are times when whizzing through a piece of text is the only option. Or maybe even the best option: I certainly don’t linger over the prose in the free newspaper on the Tube. But surely Tolstoy deserves a bit more of our attention.
That’s why the Slow Reading Movement is gaining ground.
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There are 2 problems:
1. There is a lot of new information produced - including the old news in new clothes - which brings us to the second problem:
2. How to know when to put more time into reading? Ok, there is a lot of authors or books that are known to create work with important/good content. But in a lot of cases you don’t know.
I am working in IT and maybe this is a branch affected more than others of the above problems. On one hand you should get things done and on the other hand doing the wrong choices can easily cause wasting a lot of time. Therefore a lot of research/reading is also need to be done.
Comment by Martin Wildam
— June 21, 2010 @ 1:04 am
Very true, Martin. It’s hard to sort the wheat from the chaff sometimes. But it can be done.
Noting what people you respect are reading is one way to make good choices.
I find it also helps to set aside a certain amount of time every day for unplugged Slow reading. I’ve never struggled to find something useful to read when the time comes. Not yet, anyway…
Comment by Carl Honoré 95.177.121.34 not found — June 21, 2010 @ 3:02 am
Thank you - I notice that I do some other kind: I do practice listening to podcasts while on the way to and from office.
As people usually talk much slower than I would speed read, this is a good option to slow down when taking input.
Maybe listening to audio books is an option for those who do hard in slowing down reading. Maybe after that comes learning better to slow read.
Comment by Martin Wildam
— June 29, 2010 @ 3:24 am
Interesting thought, Martin. I listen to podcasts when I run to and from work and I find the slower speaking pace quite relaxing. Especially since most of the reading I do for work is more on the speedy end. I save the slow reading for novels in my spare time.
Comment by Carl Honoré
— July 9, 2010 @ 1:11 am