Escape Only to Reading

We are fully capable of picking up (or cueing up) a book and reading it on our own terms, for our own reasons.

We’ve Been Poorly Trained

But we’ve been trained to think and behave this way, and our first step to repair is recognizing that others are conditioning our approach. We are taught to consume books rather than read them, consider them thoughtfully or critically. 

• Most often, social media alters our expectations by giving us “answers” quickly. We come to expect this of everything. Can’t AI just tell us what we need? Even the book influencers are caught up in these “quick takeaway” recommendations and reviews. 
• Schools which test or quiz in standardized exams have long conditioned us that single right answers are the goal to learning well. This approach actually neuters our thinking, teaching that a single meaning to a reading is out there.
• The business model for consumers and books is far more interested in making profits over slow consideration of ideas, churning out books for hype and “fan fawning,” provoking us to buy more. And our fast consumption is usually done over books built to that purpose: escapist “guilty pleasure” reads. 
• And, when so much is being published by content creators too, the number of choices is overwhelming. We become paralyzed by the choices, a kind of FOMO, and so end up looking quickly at dozens of offerings rather than sinking thoughtfully into one or two. 

Seen together, the weak reading habits we find ourselves engaged in should surprise no one. It seems like everything wants us to read quickly, miss deeper thinking, and get “three takeaways” for our visit. 

Choosing Our Own Strategy

Consider what we might read, for instance, if we love philosophical puzzles. We might find three choices to read:

• Peter Singer’s book, Animal Liberation, a 400+ page book on utilitarian philosophy applied to our work with animals.
• Ursula K. Le Guin’s short story, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” a 4 page utopia puzzle that asks us why we allow suffering to continue.
• An episode of The Good Place, the NBC TV series, about 30 minutes long.

To slow down to appreciate and consider what we might from each of these requires a different set of strategies from us. The TV episode may be quick, but to consider its philosophical challenges will require some thinking on our part afterwards, actively, which might be alone or in conversation with others. Knowing that our streaming service will automatically launch another program, we will have to shut it down and make some dedicated space for that active thinking.

The short story, too, will require little actual reading time–part of a lunch, perhaps–but what we do after that reading to puzzle out its questions might require more time looking over the actual text and writing out some ideas; or it may also require discussion with others who have read it.

But Singer’s book requires making real reading time, several sessions of focused thought without distraction. And while some time afterwards will be required, we might find that note-taking or journaling his thinking and our responses as we read is largely enough to work with. If we like what we’ve read, we might encourage others to join us in the reading. 

 Notice that:

1. How we approach them is not against the forces of schools, media, or publishing, but is considered independently from them. It’s about the text and what we want from it; nothing else.
2. The building of that time and space is entirely in our hands. We plan for it as we would any activity we care about: cooking well, exercising, an important hobby, our wind-down time before bed. And to make any of these kinds of activities work, we trim out the distractions produced by those other forces.

Space and Time to Read

Some reading space management tools are easy enough, then.

We need to designate a space for reading. This usually means a comfortable space that is outside of high-traffic and distracting noise. It means shutting down device notifications or putting a phone in a Focus Mode. It means turning off extra browser tabs on screens, and perhaps using the simplest tools we can find. For more difficult reads, I still go to paper copy and have a pen and notebook ready if I don’t annotate the book directly.

We need to create a new habit and mindset for reading. This often means a routine time and place to re-train our brain for focused work. It means breaking down our reading into short more intense periods of time and increasing these gradually. It means interacting with the text in some way–annotating, taking notes, talking back, etc. 

It means taking breaks to consider what we’ve read, quietly and at length, setting some boundaries with family and roommates for no interruptions. It means rewarding ourselves for staying on task to reinforce the habit. And it means later sharing and communicating the ideas we’ve read with others.

Perhaps most importantly, we need to recognize what our own distractions are. As we read and develop our new reading approach, we should take note of what personal bad habits and distractions interfere with our work. Work progressively to shut these down.

Perhaps most importantly, we need to recognize what our own distractions are.

Conclusion: Our Reading, Our Choices

The first step to reading less as an economical consumer and more as a thoughtful embracer of the arts and ideas is about shedding ourselves of the distractions which teach us bad habits.

What remains is our own work to make space in our lives for reading. Once there in that space, we can think about reading techniques and idea-building.  

Want More Still? Literary Nomads

The Literary Nomads podcast helps listeners see connections that we all make in our readings, in our language, in our cultures. It’s more about reading itself, how we make meaning, how we discover it, and what uses we put it to. 

Two episodes from Journey 5: Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress” and one from Journey 6: Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” speak to our reading habits. Give them a listen here!

Deeper Reasons

For those interested in the more academic, researched basis for this approach, I lean quite a bit on the phenomenology of reading and reader-response criticism, which emphasize the active role of readers in creating and discovering meaning.

This post works to preserve control of individual reader experiences while focusing on providing an environment for more immersive and personally meaningful reading experiences. It also reinforces that the simple “right answers” that so many institutions promote are antithetical to good reading practice. While this post omits several critical strategies to improving reading, it is an introductory post designed merely for readers to take control of their reading spaces and time. Other posts on specific reading strategies will follow.

It’s true that practical guides like a “Reading Template” are contrary to the critical thinking approaches that ultimately readers will employ. The template here is therefore more of a guide or a temporary approach to establish habit, with the intention that it be temporary.

A lot of work has been done in the field after Iser’s works, The Implied Reader (1974) and The Act of Reading (1978), especially in cultural context, intersectionality, and digital humanities; more, a quick overview of Iser appears to expose criticisms of ignoring history, of the role of community, or relativism, and how actual real-world readers work differently than implied readers. These are valid criticisms, and I will address them as we move forward.

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