The Art of Slow Reading

The art of wearisome translation Patrick Kingsley If youre development this article in print, chances be youll only get done half of what Ive written. And if youre reading this online, you king non eve finish a fifth. These are the two findings from two recent research projects, which both suggest that umteen of us no acheer have the concentration to read articles through to their conclusion. The problem doesnt exactly stop there academics report that we are becoming less attentive book-readers, too. So are we getting stupider?Is that what this is approximately? Sort of. According to The Shallows, a new book by engine room sage Nicholas Carr, our hyperactive online habits are damaging the mental faculties we need to simplyt against and understand lengthy textual information. Round-the-clock news feeds leave us hyperlinking from one article to the next without necessarily engaging fully with whatsoever of the content our reading is frequently interrupted by the ping o f the current email and we are now sorb short bursts of address on Twitter and Facebook more than regularly than longer texts.Because of the internet, we have become really good at collecting a wide range of information, but we are also gradually forgetting how to sit back, contemplate, and relate all these facts to individually other. Still reading? Youre probably in a dwindle minority. But no matter a literary revolution is at hand. First we had late 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 while reading, and re-reading.They ask us to switch slay our computers every so often and rediscover both the joy of personalized engagement with printed texts, and the ability to process them fully. Lancelot Fletcher, the first present- solar day originator to vulgarise the term slow reading, argues that slow reading is not so much about unleashing the readers cr eativity, 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 weed help connect a reader to his neighbourhood. Slow reading is a community event restoring connections amongst ideas and mess. The continuity of relationships through reading is attendd when we borrow books from friends when we read long stories to our kids until they fall asleep. But our eras technological diarrhea is saving more and more slow readers to the fore. Keith Thomas, the Oxford history professor, is one such reader.He doesnt see himself as part of a wider slow community, but has stock-still recently written about his bewilderment at the hasty reading techniques in contemporary academia. I dont think utilize a search engine to find certain key words in a text is a renewal for reading it properly, he says. You dont get a proper sense of th e work, or understand its context. The words of the writer, suggests sage Nicholas Carr, act as a gas in the mind of the reader, inspiring new insights, associations, and perceptions. And, perhaps even more signifi smoketly, it is only through slow reading that great literature can be cultivated in the future. As Carr writes, the very existence of the attentive, hypercritical reader provides the spur for the writers work. It gives the author the confidence to look for new forms of expression, to blaze difficult and demanding paths of thought, to venture into uncharted and sometimes idle 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 whitethorn be that it erodes, slowly, ones sense of self, ones subject matter for the kind of pleasure in isolation that reading has, since printed books became co mmon, been standard. Whats to be done, then? Most slow readers realise that total rejection of the web is passing unrealistic, but many another(prenominal) felt that temporary isolation from technology was the answer. nigh 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 particular 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 written material this article I was flicking constantly between sites, skimming too often, absorbing too little internet reading has become too inwrought in my daily life for me to change.I read essays and articles not i n surd copy but as PDFs, and Im more contented churning through lots of news features from several 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 stop by cutting off your internet connection. Or if you want to reassign adverts and other distractions from your screen, you could always download offline reader Instapaper for your iPhone. If youre still reading, that is.