The Art of Slow Reading Books

20/7/2010 The art of slow reading | Books | The …
The art of slow reading

Has endlessly skimming short texts on the internet made us
stupider? An increasing number of experts think so - and say it's
time to slow down . . .
Pat rick Kingsley

The Guardian, Thursday 1 5 July 2 01 0
Is it tim e to slow our reading dow n? Photograph: Stev e Caplin
If you're reading this article in print, chances are you'll only get through half of what I've
written. And if you're reading this online, you might not even finish a fifth. At least, those
are the two verdicts from a pair of recent research projects – respectively, the Poynter
Institute's Eyetrack survey, and analysis by Jakob Nielsen – which both suggest that
many of us no longer have the concentration to read articles through to their conclusion.
The problem doesn't just stop there: academics report that we are becoming less
attentive book-readers, too. Bath Spa University lecturer Greg Garrard recently
revealed that he has had to shorten his students' reading list, while Keith Thomas, an
Oxford historian, has written that he is bemused by junior colleagues who analyse
sources with a search engine, instead of reading them in their entirety.
So are we getting stupider? Is that what this is about? Sort of. According to The
Shallows, a new book by technology sage Nicholas Carr, our hyperactive online habits
are damaging the mental faculties we need to process and understand lengthy textual
information. Round-the-clock news feeds leave us hyperlinking from one article to the
next – without necessarily engaging fully with any of the content; our reading is
frequently interrupted by the ping of the latest email; and we are now absorbing short
bursts of words on Twitter and Facebook more regularly than longer texts.
Which all means that although, because of the internet, we have become very good at
collecting a wide range of factual titbits, we are also gradually forgetting how to sit back,
contemplate, and relate all these facts to each other. And so, as Carr writes, "we're losing
our ability to strike a balance between those two very different states of mind. Mentally,
we're in perpetual locomotion".
Still reading? You're probably in a dwindling minority. But no matter: a literary

revolution is at hand. First we had slow 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 off
our computers every so often and rediscover both the joy of personal engagement with
physical texts, and the ability to process them fully.
guardian.co.uk/books/…/slow-reading 1/15
"If you want the deep experience of a book, if you want to internalise it, to mix an
author's ideas with your own and make it a more personal experience, you have to read
it slowly," says Ottawa-based John Miedema, author of Slow Reading (2009).
But Lancelot R Fletcher, the first present-day author to popularise the term "slow
reading", disagrees. He argues that slow reading is not so much about unleashing the
reader's creativity, as uncovering the author's. "My intention was to counter
postmodernism, to encourage the discovery of authorial content," the American expat
explains from his holiday in the Caucasus mountains in eastern Europe. "I told my
students to believe that the text was written by God – if you can't understand
something written in the text, it's your fault, not the author's."
And while Fletcher used the term initially as an academic tool, slow reading has since
become a more wide-ranging concept. Miedema writes on his website that slow reading,
like slow food, is now, at root, a localist idea which can help connect a reader to his
neighbourhood. "Slow reading," writes Miedema, "is a community event restoring
connections between ideas and people. The continuity of relationships through reading is
experienced when we borrow books from friends; when we read long stories to our kids
until they fall asleep." Meanwhile, though the movement began in academia, Tracy
Seeley, an English professor at the University of San Francisco, and the author of a blog
about slow reading, feels strongly that slow reading shouldn't "just be the province of the
intellectuals. Careful and slow reading, and deep attention, is a challenge for all of us."
So the movement's not a particularly cohesive one – as Malcolm Jones wrote in a recent
Newsweek article, "there's no letterhead, no board of directors, and, horrors, no central
website" – and nor is it a new idea: as early as 1623, the first edition of Shakespeare's
folio encouraged us to read the playwright "again and again"; in 1887, Friedrich
Nietzsche described himself as a "teacher of slow reading"; and, back in the 20s and 30s,
dons such as IA Richards popularised close textual analysis within academic circles.
But what's clear is that our era's technological diarrhoea is bringing more and more slow
readers to the fore. Keith Thomas, the Oxford history professor, is one such reader. He
doesn't see himself as part of a wider slow community, but has nevertheless recently
written – in the London Review of Books – about his bewilderment at the hasty reading
techniques in contemporary academia. "I don't think using a search engine to find
certain key words in a text is a substitute for reading it properly," he says. "You don't
get a proper sense of the work, or understand its context. And there's no serendipity –
half the things I've found in my research have come when I've luckily stumbled across
something I wasn't expecting."
Some academics vehemently disagree, however. One literature professor, Pierre

Bayard, notoriously wrote a book about how readers can form valid opinions about texts
they have only skimmed – or even not read at all. "It's possible to have a passionate
conversation about a book that one has not read, including, perhaps especially, with
someone else who has not read it," he says in How to Talk About Books that You Haven't
Read (2007), before suggesting that such bluffing is even "at the heart of a creative
process".
Slow readers, obviously, are at loggerheads with Bayard. Seeley says that you might be
able to engage "in a basic conversation if you have only read a book's summary, but for
the kinds of reading I want my students to do, the words matter. The physical shape of
sentences matter."
Nicholas Carr's book elaborates further. "The words of the writer," suggests Carr, "act as
a catalyst in the mind of the reader, inspiring new insights, associations, and perceptions,
sometimes even epiphanies." And, perhaps even more significantly, it is only through
slow reading that great literature can be cultivated in the future. As Carr writes, "the
very existence of the attentive, critical reader provides the spur for the writer's work. It
gives the author the confidence to explore new forms of expression, to blaze difficult and
demanding paths of thought, to venture into uncharted and sometimes hazardous
territory."
What's more, Seeley argues, Bayard's literary bluffing merely obscures a bigger
problem: the erosion of our powers of concentration, as highlighted by Carr's book.
Seeley notes that after a conversation with some of her students, she discovered that
"most can't concentrate on reading a text for more than 30 seconds or a minute at a
time. We're being trained away from slow reading by new technology." But unlike Bath
Spa's Greg Garrard, she does not want to cut down on the amount of reading she sets
her classes. "It's my responsibility to challenge my students," says Seeley. "I don't just
want to throw in the towel."
Seeley finds an unlikely ally in Henry Hitchings, who – as the author of the rather
confusingly named How to Really Talk About Books You Haven't Read (2008) – could
initially be mistaken as a follower of Bayard. "My book on the subject notwithstanding,"
says Hitchings, "I'm no fan of bluffing and blagging. My book was really a covert
statement to the effect that reading matters. It's supposed to encourage would-be
bluffers to go beyond mere bluffing, though it does this under the cover of arming them
for literary combat."
But Hitchings also feels that clear-cut distinctions between slow and fast reading are
slightly idealistic. "In short, the fast-slow polarity – or antithesis, if you prefer – strikes
me as false. We all have several guises as readers. If I am reading – to pick an obvious
example – James Joyce, slow reading feels appropriate. If I'm reading the instruction
manual for a new washing machine, it doesn't."
Hitchings does agree that the internet is part of the problem. "It accustoms us to new
ways of reading and looking and consuming," Hitchings says, "and it fragments our
attention span in a way that's not ideal if you want to read, for instance, Clarissa." He
also argues that "the real issue with the internet may be that it erodes, slowly, one's
sense of self, one's capacity for the kind of pleasure in isolation that reading has, since
printed books became common, been standard".
What's to be done, then? All the slow readers I spoke to realise that total rejection of the
web is extremely unrealistic, but many felt that temporary isolation from technology
was the answer. Tracy Seeley's students, for example, 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? Garrard seems to think so: "I'm no luddite – I'm on my iPhone right now,
having just checked my email – but I regularly carve out reading holidays in the middle
of my week: four or five hours with the internet disconnected."
Meanwhile, Jakob Nielsen – the internet guru behind some of the statistics at the
beginning of this article – thinks the iPad might just be the answer: "It's pleasant and
fun, and doesn't remind people of work." But though John Miedema thinks iPads and
Kindles are "a good halfway house, particularly if you're on the road", the author reveals
that, for the true slow reader, there's 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 for Miedema. "When the
reading is complete, you place it with satisfaction on your bookshelf," he says.
Personally, I'm not sure I could ever go offline for long. Even while writing this article I
was flicking constantly between sites, skimming too often, absorbing too little; internet
reading has become too ingrained in my daily life for me to change. I read essays and
articles not in hard copy but as PDFs, and I'm more comfortable 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 peace by
cutting off your internet connection. Or if you want to remove adverts and other
distractions from your screen, you could always download offline reader Instapaper for
your iPhone. If you're still reading, that is.
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Comments in chronological order (Total 91
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pieceofcake
15 Jul 2010, 7:40AM
I never read the articles.
I go straight down to the comments.
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CaptainSpaulding
15 Jul 2010, 8:10AM
The print edition of this article recommends five great slow reads...though omitting Sten
Nadolny' s "The Discovery of Slowness"
How could you not mention it??
( you still might have but I was rushing through the article )
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fionabeckett
15 Jul 2010, 8:11AM
Contributor
This article illustrates exactly the problem. Not because of its length but the live links
which create endless distractions as you read it. Interesting, though.
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LarrydelaCrois
15 Jul 2010, 9:07AM
Read first paragraph, skip to comments, read first two comments and any others that
are very short or written in bold, make comment, return every 5 minutes to check if
anyone has commented on my comment, get angry when they haven't, recommend my
own comment.
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insertfunnyusername
15 Jul 2010, 9:15AM
The problem for me personally is text on the computer screen. I have no problem at all
reading dense text in books, on paper, slowly, in detail.
With text on a screen though, I do have a tendency to skim, read quickly, jump ahead. If
I'm reading something that needs to be read closely, or something I want to read slowly
to savour, I print it out.
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stattouk
15 Jul 2010, 9:18AM
TL:DR
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IWasThere
15 Jul 2010, 9:19AM
too long;didn't read
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shutitoff
15 Jul 2010, 9:21AM
tl;dr
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shutitoff
15 Jul 2010, 9:22AM
Oh man. It took me minutes to work up the energy to sign up and post that comment.
And someone got there first.
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ct001
15 Jul 2010, 9:31AM
I read until the first mention of the iPad, then stopped.
Do I win £40?
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ct001
15 Jul 2010, 9:33AM
This comment has been removed by a moderator. Replies may also be deleted.
philobile
15 Jul 2010, 9:41AM
For study-reading and editing I find that I still need to have text-on-paper (paper also
helps with being able to scribble notes to self). If I am reading text-on-screen I miss
many spelling, etc., errors. Reading on a screen definitely seems to encourage skimming.
I agree with Hitchings that different reading modes to suit circumstances (and,
increasingly technology) are probably the better way to go (with an attendant awareness
that you are choosing a particular technology/reading mode).
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nietzsche39
15 Jul 2010, 9:41AM
Not seen the print version of this, but one book I'd recommend to 'slow readers' is James
McCreet's "The Vice Society".
It's written in a faux-Victorian style with ornate grammar and some vocabulary that has
ceased to exist. In style and structure, it's more akin to gothic architecture - something
to read and re-read.
That has to be the distinction - things you read for an immediate download of info, and
things you read for the pure aesthetic pleasure of reading.
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sparclear
15 Jul 2010, 9:44AM
there's reading for fact-finding
and there's reading like listening to music
simples
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steviedm
15 Jul 2010, 9:47AM
I started reading this and then was distracted by a flashing pop up at the bottom of the
screen asking me to take part in market research.
After 10 minutes analysing the new Waitrose adverts, I returned to the story and
couldn't be bothered to read it anymore.
No doubt the Guardian has made a few pence out of my clicking though and someone's
got to pay Patrick Kingsley's wages.
Hold on a minute - how about putting online newspaper pages behind a paywall and
removing distracting advertising? Bet nobody's thought of that.
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besidethesea
15 Jul 2010, 9:58AM
I skim loads of articles to see if they are interesting enough for me to read the whole
thing properly. I also get distracted by the blue links and often click on something, get
interested and then forget to go back to the page I was originally on to finish reading it.
I think that's why I spend far too many hours a day on here instead of doing something
more useful and constructive like remembering I have to go to work as I have a
mortgage to pay! :-)
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devaki
15 Jul 2010, 10:01AM
I find that as I grow older, I've become more selective about what I read. Of course, I
use the internet a lot and have now become an expert skimmer of texts. But I can and
do take time to read what I enjoy. Unfortunately, work pressures do tend to take me
away from a good book!
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didgethediva
15 Jul 2010, 10:09AM
Forgive me, but is there notl an incoherence in the last sentence of paragraph 17? Or am
I reading too fast?
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envee
15 Jul 2010, 10:12AM
If you are going to write something exceptionally boring, and be inarticulate to use 15
words where five are enough, of course I am going to skim through it.
Like this article. It's boring.
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christopherhawtree
15 Jul 2010, 10:21AM
It is noth this either/or.
Some prose can be read quicker than others.
And some lacklustre writing can be handy for the nuggets within.
A study of the screen's effect on the eyes would be interesting.
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johnandanne
15 Jul 2010, 10:21AM
In the last week I've read 6 books and really enjoyed them. I do read very quickly and
learnt to scan read when I was about 14 or 15.(not sure if scan reading really is the
name,but there you go!) I dont understand skimming as you might miss the best bits
and become confused. How can you talk about books you have never read?
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oddegg
15 Jul 2010, 10:31AM
Strikes a cord with me.
I've always been a fast reader anyway, but reading online has certainly encouraged my
tendancy to skim and I've found myself reaching the end of books feeling, however good
the author, slightly unsatisfied and like I've just had fast-food for the mind: twenty
minutes and you've forgotten you ate and are hungry again. Not so much with non-
fiction but even there I find myself having to re-read passages that I've skipped over
without taking them in properly.
Recently I have been trying to read more mindfully - making sure I am taking in every
word by 'reading aloud' in my head - and I do find I'm getting from the texts and seeing
meanings that perhaps I would otherwise have missed. I've started to use an Irish
'accent' in my head for reading Finnegans Wake and am finding it easier going than I
expected, though I'm still struggling a little with it!
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Sajetan
15 Jul 2010, 10:31AM
Where is the real evidence that developing certain reading skills, such as skim reading, is
detrimental to other reading skills? The opinions of a 'sage' here and and 'guru' there
don't count. But perhaps I skimmed the article too fast (surely it's not supposed to
exemplify the need for deep reading?) and missed the links to the solid evidence?
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deq451
15 Jul 2010, 10:35AM
The internet is a joy. It makes stupid people think they are clever, whilst actually
denying them the variety of opinion and commentary that traditional media sources
dispensed. As a result, fewer people have the ability to access and analyse data in any
useful concentration -- which allows those who can to get on with running things and
making money whilst everyone else mumbles about evil bankers and Lady GaGa.
Otherwise, I can thoroughly recommend Keith Thomas' book, Man & the Natural World
to anyone with time to read it.
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walmartfleece
15 Jul 2010, 10:44AM
Why do I need a gizmo to cut off my Internet connection when I have Virgin media to do
it for me.
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millbrook
15 Jul 2010, 10:47AM
tl;dr
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Pete14
15 Jul 2010, 11:00AM
Surely one of the main problems is that so few books published nowadays lack the
substance to be worthy of a slow read. We seem to have equated quality with length and
rather than writers developing style and offering a text with which readers can truely
engage offer mindless detail as a poor substitute. I am currently going through a reading
crisis, finding it more and more difficult to find any modern writer who seriously
challenges his or her readers with anything other than tedium.
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sparerib
15 Jul 2010, 11:01AM
revealed that he has had to shorten his students' reading list,
And isn't that a big part of the problem? What university lecturers should be saying is:
"This is the reading list, if you want to study here and get a degree, go and get on with it.
And no skimming."
I can hardly imagine my first tutors reaction to complaints about the amount of reading
matter...a stroke probably.
Admittedly the benefits are not obvious to everyone, I was an avid reader as a child,
some would say obsessive, my family feared for my health and my eyesight, I was
forever being marshalled outside for fresh air and exercise. When I went to university,
(to study English Literature), my lovely Grandad took me aside to say: "This is
university, it'll be much harder than school you know, I doubt you'll have time for all
that reading."
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internecine
15 Jul 2010, 11:06AM
Skipped through this on my iPad. Is it any good?
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chrisbraun
15 Jul 2010, 11:07AM
The Internet makes it much easier for me to order books from the library.
@Pete14
Surely one of the main problems is that so few books published nowadays lack the
substance to be worthy of a slow read.
Read older books.
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captainlego
15 Jul 2010, 11:11AM
Stupider? More stupid, surely? Or was that deliberate?
:P
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Porthos
15 Jul 2010, 11:12AM
This is an excellent half of an article, but it's still only half an article. At no point is
WRITING discussed. Surely developments in our reading habits both influence and are
influenced by our writing habits?
Who want's to start the movement for slow writing? (he says at work, quickly typing
away on thread whilst his boss isn't looking).
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Funko
15 Jul 2010, 11:22AM
TLDR
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MoonlightShadow
15 Jul 2010, 11:22AM
Articles like this are what make me love the Guardian so much :) Great writing on a
very interesting topic.
I admit I couldn't read it from beginning to end without jumping over at least five times
to MSN, and even facebook (I just had to share "technological diarrhoea" ^^ I like that).
When I got used to reading news and stuff on the internet I realised how discursive my
attention became as a result... To cure that, I intenionally changed my reading habits: I
browse through the titles on the main page first, pick the articles I'm interested in, open
them all up and then read them one by one, from beginning to end. Adhereing to this
process also made me realise that I have to time my reading if I want to get the most out
of it - I won't start reading unless I have like 10 minutes at my disposal. So usually I
read at breakfast or coffee break, not between two clicks at work.
I believe this helps a lot not only with keeping myself focused but also with processing
information properly. I can only recommend it to everyone concerned about stuff like
this :)
On a side note, I'm also keeping a diary for the sole purpose of practicing handwriting...
Like reading skills, handwriting also seems to deteriorate at the speed of light in the
internet age.
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spore
15 Jul 2010, 11:32AM
Some skimming tips from Pascal:
'People ask if I have myself read all the books I quote. - I reply that I have not; it would
certainly have meant spending my life reading very bad books; but I read Escobar right
through twice; and, as for the others, I got my friends to read them, but I did not use a
single passage without reading it myself in the book quoted, going into the context
involved, and reading the passage before and after it, to avoid all risk of quoting an
objection as an answer, which would have been reprehensible and unjust.'
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Sajetan
15 Jul 2010, 11:34AM
Which all means that although, because of the internet, we have become very good at
collecting a wide range of factual titbits
This reading skill is called scanning. It's what you do when you only want to collect
some particular facts out of a pile of text. You wouldn't deep read the Yellow Pages just
to get the number of the pizza delivery firm.
The other useful fast reading skill is skimming. You're not going to get through life
without this skill. There's a hell of a lot of text out there, and only so much cream worth
skimming off.
I don't know of any evidence that developing these skills impairs close reading skills, or
vice versa. If the latter were the case, then perhaps too much deep reading would leave
us less well equipped to deal with the reality of permanent textual overload.
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StigLFC
15 Jul 2010, 11:37AM
@LarrydelaCrois
Was that 5 minutes? Did you get angry?
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badbeard
15 Jul 2010, 11:45AM
The amount of people admitting to commenting on articles they haven't read goes some
way to explain the quality of their posts.
I've read half of Bayard's book; rather than sanctioning lazy or quick reading, I took it to
be acknowledging that one can't read everything fully, that it's okay to have an opinion
on something one hasn't read fully (or at all) as there's other ways to experience a book
than just reading every single word carfefully, and that a lot of other people are blagging
too.
As a consequence, I read different books differently. Some books I read more carefully
as a consequence of reading Bayard's.
Also, I find that my scatty, quick, half-arsed online reading leads me to take real
pleasure in reading the printed word with no distractions.
I read the Guardian online during the week, then digest the Saturday paper over a few
days, saving a few articles for future digestion.
On the whole, I believe that the internet has improved my reading habits, both slow and
quick.
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tufsoft
15 Jul 2010, 11:55AM
"It's possible to have a passionate conversation about a book that one has not read,
including, perhaps especially, with someone else who has not read it,"
This about describes the position of the French philosopher Althusser, who made a
career of writing about Marx without actually having read him. Trouble is, his past
eventually caught up with him and he picked up his collected works and jumped out of a
window with them, I believe from a very high place.
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WillDuff
15 Jul 2010, 12:03PM
The Keith Thomas quote isn't quite as you present it. Here's the authentic version:
I try to console myself with the reflection that they will be less sensitive to the context of
what they find and that they will certainly not make the unexpected discoveries which
come from serendipity. But the sad truth is that much of what it has taken me a lifetime
to build up by painful accumulation can now be achieved by a moderately diligent
student in the course of a morning.
I didn't read the full article above because I'm at work (ha!), but one problem is the
highly plentiful availability of tonnes of cheap books, all desperate for us to read them.
Most, of course, are dispensible. We should concentrate on a few good books, and not feel
any obligation to read the latest prize winner, or the book that everybody else is reading.
Read deeply and ignore fashion.
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maxivory
15 Jul 2010, 12:04PM
Good article. I notice that the latest version of Apple's Safari browser incorporates a
'Reader' option which may help people to focus their attention on the substance of a
story, as it isolates the content from other potential distractions on the page (banners,
links etc). Another useful innovation.
http://www.apple.com/safari/whats-new.html
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philobile
15 Jul 2010, 12:11PM
Sparerib:
revealed that he has had to shorten his students' reading list,
And isn't that a big part of the problem? What university lecturers should be saying is:
"This is the reading list, if you want to study here and get a degree, go and get on with it.
And no skimming."
Many moons ago I worked as a librarian, and found that most university students were
genuinely shocked when confronted with the reality of having to read more than one or
(at the most, two-) books for any given essay / research assignment that they were used
to at high school.
The long list of books and journals set aside by their lecturers / tutors seemed to be
taken as a personal affront - or would that be, the awful realisation that there would now
be less time to spend propping up the bar counter?
At the time it seemed to me that schools ill-prepared their students for the realities of
university-level education; particularly the hard graft necessary to gain a degree. I can't
imagine that the internet has helped - both with reading and analytical skills, but also as
a source of plagarised papers (even thesies).
Some lecturers had their own strategies to combat any skimping on the reading, there
was one engineering lecturer that took particular delight in setting questions from
end/foot notes of prescribed readings - just to make sure that the students really paid
attention.
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PickmansModel
15 Jul 2010, 12:18PM
@Sajetan
[...]
I don't know of any evidence that developing these skills [scanning and skimming]
impairs close reading skills, or vice versa. If the latter were the case, then perhaps too
much deep reading would leave us less well equipped to deal with the reality of
permanent textual overload.
Hmm. Online for extracting information, paper for pleasure seems to be my default
mode after several decades of reading (and, indeed, getting on for 30 years of using
computers for word processing etc.).
I doubt you'll get the full effect of a decent poem, or dense prose, from scanning or
skimming. So if these things are important, so too is the ability to perform deep reading
when required.
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Sajetan
15 Jul 2010, 12:26PM
PickmansModel
I doubt you'll get the full effect of a decent poem, or dense prose, from scanning or
skimming. So if these things are important, so too is the ability to perform deep reading
when required.
Exactly - the different skills are appropriate for different contexts. What I doubt without
more evidence than the opinion of some dubious "sage" is that developing certain
reading skills is "damaging the mental faculties" needed for other reading skills.
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DickSocrates
15 Jul 2010, 12:28PM
No, because the book I am reading is likely to be worth reading and articles online are
unlikely to be worth reading properly, regardless of who wrote it or what the topic is.
I didn't read this article either because there's no point.
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DanielJOwen
15 Jul 2010, 12:37PM
Only read the first para then stopped - but only because I didn't find the topic
interesting or relevant. Have you considered the possibility that it's the quality of the
writing that has declined?
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theirdarkaddress
15 Jul 2010, 12:39PM
I just skim read this, scrolling down, picking up the main points from the topic sentences.
Seemed like a good article. Might come back and read it in detail later.
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ColereDesImbeciles
15 Jul 2010, 1:11PM
I like that, as WillDuff points out, the ambivalence of Keith Thomas's position (in a short,
recent article, freely available online) was completely miscontrued here. When I read
that article, online, I didn't miss the overall point that online databases were
revolutionizing the way historians worked. Maybe facile newspaper articles looking for a
quick and easy tag for everything are more the problem, then? The comparison to slow
food says it all really: covert lifestyle smuggery.
(Prof. Thomas is also famous for his ability to scan for information: a colleague once
witnessed him in the library zooming through piles of volumes at about a page a second.
But then, reading for research and reading for pleasure are different.)
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LarrydelaCrois
15 Jul 2010, 1:31PM
StigLFC
I'm always angry. Why else would I bother commenting in the Guardian?
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MaxCairnduff
15 Jul 2010, 1:46PM
I think one additional point is that reading online is inherently tiring. Computer screens
aren't great for reading from. There's a flicker effect. That's why ereaders tend to use
electronic ink.
If the act of reading is itself tiring due to that flicker, naturally one will read less at any
one sitting. One will tend to flick about.
I'm not saying the points on general trends are wrong, but I think the physical medium
of the computer screen is itself a factor that promotes more scanning and skipping about.
On a separate note, tl;dr might have been funny the first time. By the fourth or fifth
time it's posted it just shows you're too lazy to read the other comments.
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20/7/2010 The art of slow reading | Books | The …

The art of slow reading

Pat rick Kingsley

Is it tim e to slow our reading dow n? Photograph: Stev e Caplin

Still reading? You're probably in a dwindling minority. But no matter: a literary

Some academics vehemently disagree, however. One literature professor, Pierre

g u a r dia n .co. u k © Gu a r dia n New s a n d Media Lim it ed 2 0 1 0

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