Reader, Come Home
Until I listened to a book on tape, I didn’t realize how much I depend on the freedom to slow down, speed up, or stop altogether while reading. With certain writers, I might pause significantly a dozen times over the course of a few paragraphs: once for comprehension, several times more to savor a phrase, and one or more times because something dri
... See moreSven Birkerts • The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age
To study the way we read is to study the way the mind works: the way it evaluates a statement for truth, the way it behaves in relation to another mind (i.e., the writer’s) across space and time. What we’re going to be doing here, essentially, is watching ourselves read (trying to reconstruct how we felt as we were, just now, reading). Why would we
... See moreGeorge Saunders • A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life
Reading books trains us to read in a particular way—in a linear fashion, focused on one thing for a sustained period.
Johann Hari • Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention--and How to Think Deeply Again
