Slow Reading

Slow Reading: An Antidote for a Fast World?
Newsweek.com: June 23, 2010 by Malcolm Jones

Forgive me for the lateness of this post, but I have an excuse. Monday was the International Day of Slowness, and I’m just getting back up to speed. I’m not kidding. You can look it up. I personally find this purely serendipitous, since I discovered the IDOS while researching Slow Reading. I took it as an omen that I was onto something good. But I digress.

I’m supposed to be talking about Slow Reading. But to get there, we have to see the context. The phrase “slow reading” goes back at least as far as the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who in 1887 described himself as a “teacher of slow reading.” The way he phrased it, you know he thought he was bucking the tide. That makes sense, because the modern world, i.e., a world built upon the concept that fast is good and faster is better, was just getting up a full head of steam. In the century and a quarter since he wrote, we have seen the world fall in love with speed in all its guises, including reading—part of President John F. Kennedy’s legend was his ability to speed read through four or five newspapers every morning. And this was all long before computers became household gadgets and our BFFs.

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“You see schools where reading is turned into a race,” Thomas Newkirk, an English professor at the University of New Hampshire, told the Associated Press last week. “You see kids on the stopwatch to see how many words they can read in a minute. That tells students a story about what reading is. It tells students to be fast is to be good.”

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This may be a movement largely without leaders or organization, but it does not lack for heroes, and wouldn’t you know, they’re all writers. In 2004, Carl Honoré published In Praise of Slow: How a Worldwide Movement Is Changing the Cult of Speed. He was inspired to write his book when he caught himself about to buy a collection of “one-minute bedtime stories” to read to his children.

John Miedema, author of Slow Reading, likens the movement to the Slow Food movement, which is as much as about taking your time as it is about consuming locally grown food. Both movements encourage increased mindfulness in the conduct of routine activity. “It’s not just about students reading as slowly as possible,” Miedema says. “Slow reading is about bringing more of the person to bear on the book.” READ MORE !