Slow Reading (and why I stopped my Goodreads Challenge)

Life in the 21st century is hurtling along at a frenetic pace, which occasional protesters have tried to handicap with the introduction of movements such as 'Slow Food' or 'Slow Gardening' to counterbalance the ease of quick stops at fast food outlets and supermarkets. In recent years, several people have pointed out that our digital era also impacts how we read.

Never before has there ever been so much free reading material available at the click of our computer mice. Articles and blog posts pop up on our screens at the rate of a pandemic. There is far too much for any single individual to keep abreast of, so FOMO sets in. We fear missing out on anything good because of the sheer abundance of notifications we receive all day, each implicitly pleading, 'Read me, read me!' 

We can either shrug off the angst and intentionally let some slide back into cyberspace where they came from, or we can try to stretch our limited attention as far as it possibly can. Many of us are attempting the second option; training ourselves to skim passages in an effort to cut to the chase, with no regret for any finer detail we might sacrifice.

I've seen popular speed reading courses advertised for students, and one young lecturer tipped us off that because of the bulk of assigned reading, we should learn to cherry pick whatever we need from text books without getting bogged down in the whole lot. When it comes to reading, we've become like ducks who are satisfied gobbling up the light weed floating on top of the pond, with no desire to dive down deeper for denser snacks with more nutrients. 

I'm sure for me this started way back at Adelaide Uni, when the number and density of our English novels exceeded the time in which we were given to read them and write the assignments. But that was a long time ago and I no longer want to be that shallow, restless reader who flits from book to book without leaving time for proper mental digestion. I suspect that when I do, I miss far too much. When we take time to read slowly and properly, even if we don't enjoy every moment, we can be sure we've missed nothing vital. I'd rather be a pelican than a hummingbird in my reading habits. 

This blog is my attempt to intentionally read slowly with my writing pad and pen at hand to jot down interesting thoughts as I progress through my books. It's my protest against the fast reading trend. And one bonus is that we get to know ourselves better, and consolidate our own true feelings when we read deeper and ponder longer.

I like to choose a fair share of thick classics authors wrote way back in the dim, dark past when reading was a main form of recreation. Sometimes when I turn another page and see more lengthy introspection or detailed nature descriptions, my pulse begins to race and my inner eyeballs roll back as my subconscious urges me to please hurry up. These visceral reactions are signs that I really need to take a deep breath and get nice and slow about my reading. When my breathing and heart rate have calmed, or I feel a desire to re-read a paragraph just for a beautiful turn of phrase, I know I'm on the right track. Clicking into that contemplative frame which our ancestors probably experienced far more often than us is a major victory. 

For the past several years, I undertook the Goodreads Challenge. Its aim is to decide in January how many books we'll knock off our reading lists before December, choosing a number that sounds slightly beyond our comfort zone. We give ourselves pats on the back with each one and a big hurrah at the end. But it's all a bit crazy if you ask me, because in 2019 my shortest book was 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar' and my longest was 'War and Peace', yet they each count as equal, single ticks in the total.

 In 2020 I started with a sinking heart instead of a rush of anticipation. Although Goodreads has great intentions by encouraging us to read more books, the emphasis on quantity irks me. It's precisely when I focus on churning through them and ticking them off that I get angsty and wound up, more inclined to binge on the next one than ponder the last.  

So I went into Goodreads and pulled the plug on the challenge! I never regretted that decision for a moment all year. Nobody even noticed that I opted out of the Goodreads Challenge or questioned me about it. And at the end of the year, I was surprised to find that Goodreads sent me an automatically generated wrap-up of my year's reading anyway. That's the best part, and not the mental whip of the tally. I won't be doing the challenge this year either. Here's to more note taking, scrunched up wads of paper, navigating my way through loopy paragraphs, copying beautiful sentences into my quote book and turning back to start of a book to clear up something I've read part way through.  

Are you into living and reading slow too? And be honest to yourself, did you feel inclined to speed read this blog post itself, so you could move on to the next thing? That could be a sign that you need to take my warning on board :)