On the Joy of Reading Slowly | Hacker News Reader

On the Joy of Reading Slowly

theguardian.com

150 pointsArchelaos51 comments

This, plus reading great books more than once.

The idea of reading a book a second time was repulsive when I had never done it before. But once I tried it, I realized that it is a much better use of my time and I get many more insights the second time around. I'd rather read an amazing book again, than waste my time on mediocre books just to say I read a lot of books.

Reading a lot of books is overrated. Reading great books is underrated.

Indeed. I used to think my to-read list is long enough already, with no need to add books I've already read to it.

I've come to realise that it's not a list, it's a priority queue. And what would be weird would be if the greatest books I've already read would rank the absolute lowest in priority. Of course they fit into the to-read priority queue, some quite high, even!

yeah I agree with this and I think there's some broader truth here that also applies to other art forms where the real value is not in the unveiling of a storyline or whatever, but in the detail in the journey along the way.

Actually this might be one definition of a great book / film / series etc - that it can't truly have 'spoilers' because the key facts of the plot is not the point.

I loved this idea (and it rang very true in context) in the Hadestown musical, which is a retelling of the story of Orpheus and Eurydice - and it begins with lyrics like "It's a sad song, it's a sad tale, it's a tragedy - but we sing it anyway".

Knowing how the story ends can sometimes even make it better, when it's a really great story.

Romeo and Juliet gives their eventual deaths away in the first few sentences, as well.

yes the modern anxiety over spoiler alerts I think is very closely tied to the "watch once and forget" culture.

It also always reminds me of that Hitchcock anecdote where he talks about the difference between surprise, which is not knowing that the bomb is under the table, to suspense, the viewer seeing the bomb but it not going off. The former is five seconds of surprise, the latter is 15 minutes of tension.

Point being that keeping the viewer in the dark is in many ways the lowest form of creating excitement. And it seems way to common nowadays both in how we watch and how stories themselves are constructed around this.

I agree - how many times have you watched your favorite movie? Favorite TV show? If only once you should watch it at least one more time.

I've only read the culture novels by Iain Banks once. I'm really looking forward to doing a second read in a few years. Thinking I might do audiobooks next time.

"My definition of a great story has nothing to do with 'a varied and interesting background.' It is: One that can be read with pleasure by a cultivated reader and reread with increased pleasure."

- Gene Wolfe, from a chain letter to George R.R. Martin and Greg Benford

I commented elsewhere that rereading a book can be compared to revisiting a certain landscape. After a wery long time I am rereading "A Study In Scarlet", the very first Sherlock Holmes story. Just from the first few chapters some things I have not noticed or perhaps forgot:

* Watson is an Afghanistan veteran

* The London borough of Holborn is referred to as "the Holborn" (no idea why)

* Watson and Holmes are flatmates, they share an apartment as they can't afford to live solo - some things don't change.

* The word "ejaculate" did some cultural traveling over the years.

There's a line in War of the Worlds that was innocuous at the time, but is impossible to read as intended now to our modern eyes:

"He heard footsteps running to and fro in the rooms, and up and down stairs behind him. His landlady came to the door, loosely wrapped in dressing gown and shawl; her husband followed ejaculating."

This brings back memories of me reading this is middle school. I remember getting to this exact spot and thinking should I be reading this? Lol. I'm glad to know I'm not the only person that read that passage a different way.

Funny how we (and victorians such as Conan Doyle and Wells) make an effort to avoid "naughty words" and then all efforts come to nothing as the language moves on.

No it isn't.

>> share an apartment as they can't afford to live solo

There was also at the time a general disdain for living solo. A person living on their own was almost seen to be hiding something. Their daily activity would be totally unchecked. The protestant ethic also saw it wasteful for one person to occupy an entire dwelling on their own. Think of all the scrooge-like literary characters who lived alone.

Not an expert on late 19 century England but this is not the way the story goes:

... He was bemoaning himself this morning because he could not get someone to go halves with him in some nice rooms which he had found, and which were too much for his purse.” “By Jove!” I cried, “if he really wants someone to share the rooms and the expense, I am the very man for him. I should prefer having a partner to being alone.

Note: story. "I should prefer having a partner to being alone." The character is reassuring the reader that he isn't the sort of oddball loner who might actually want to live alone. They may have expenses, but they both feel a societal need not to be that strange man living alone in an empty apartment.

Nabokov said:

> Curiously enough, one cannot read a book: one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, an active and creative reader is a rereader.

https://www.themarginalian.org/2013/01/21/nabokov-on-what-ma...

There are several reasons why I agree, but I want to elaborate on one specifically.

I believe almost all "meaning" comes from context. The process of reading a book is part of the process of developing a context for a story. When we come back to the book's beginning again, we are experiencing that same work in a new context. Often that new context provides elements in the text I may have missed on the first read-through

And, further, when I return to books with new life experiences their context has changed again, sometimes radically: reading King's "The Shining" as a preteen was very different than reading through it as a twice-divorced alcoholic with two grown children.

In my understanding, some texts allow for that return better than others.

Some texts are complex, in that they can speak deeply to us in many ways based on the varied contexts in which we approach them, and that's much of how I value the books I value.

One reason why I think reading great books multiple times is important is that it allows us to gain new insights and perspectives on the text each time we read it. Our understanding of a book can change as we grow and experience new things in life, and rereading a book can help us see it in a new light. For example, a book that might have seemed simplistic or shallow on our first read-through might reveal itself to be a deeply complex and thought-provoking work on a second or third read. Additionally, rereading a book can help us better understand and appreciate the author's intentions and the themes and ideas they were exploring.

Sounds like GPT-3.

I really enjoy the slow, methodical questioning of the hustle culture. People are realising that chasing metrics won't make them better or happier.

Read books that feel right at a speed that feels right. Give up on those you don't like even when everyone says they're great. It's a hobby. It's meant to be enjoyable.

Not to be too snarky, but I think this should be titled "On the Joy of Advertising Thirty Books" rather than reading slowly.

I started playing a game a few years ago--given a headline, guess whether the buried lede is an advertisement for a book. Is it about someone dead or a banal new factoid about someone dead? Almost certainly yes. At some point, it stopped being a game and started being They Live.

This, though, puts it to shame. It's like seeing a move in Go or Chess where you wouldn't think to make it yourself, but can see the implications of why it was done and sigh appreciatively in regards to the craft itself.

How do you motivate consumers to buy more books when attention is fixed, taxed, and waning? And there's a cultural trend amongst the literate towards slower, more intentional living? Convince them that rapidly multiplexing and timeslicing between ten books is actually slower than the intentionally slower consumption of one. Slyly suggest that you'll also rack up a higher book count as well.

How do you receive more product placement revenue while shying away from being perceived as a vehicle for product placement? Cloak thirty advertisements in a morass of trendy deep workism and throw in The Road as a red herring.

It's beautiful to watch in the sheer chutzpah of it all. It's a little too clever and it makes my tool-assisted sense tingle.

Susie Mesure's only other article (for the Guardian--she's freelance and a real person) was published the day before this one and is literally a deep advertisement by and for Microsoft, so who knows? Maybe we're already in the event horizon of Adverturing and its consequences.

Exactly my thoughts. The first four paras are the only useful part of the article, everything else is advertising tons of books.

On the other hand, the comments here are worth reading as always. :-)

I’ve started doing many things more slowly, not just reading. Cooking, for example. After the challenge of chopping an onion really quickly wore off, I started going slower and enjoying the moment. I realized chefs in kitchens go fast because they have to. They have many tables to serve. I have just one, so for me trying to look like a chef doesn’t make any sense. I can go slow and it’s ok, my family isn’t “waiting for their order”. I call them to the table when dinner is ready, which means: no rush needed, and I can just enjoy the moment. Same goes for almost anything else.

Can I ask what prompted this? I've tried to change my life to fit this in the past few years, since reading Carl Honore's In Praise of Slow (released in 2005! I can only imagine what he thinks now), even down to shifting away from speeding on the highway and just going the speed limit. I've found that one simple act gave me a better mindset, same with trying to do other things slowly as well (including just meandering the city I now live in).

> Can I ask what prompted this?

I think the main thing is that I learned that the level of stress that comes with doing things as fast as possible is disproportionate to the time saved. In other words, by doing things as fast as possible I'm not actually a whole lot quicker, just a bit quicker, but a whole lot more stressed. The speed limit example you gave is a good one by the way. You feel like you're saving a lot of time by going 10% faster than the limit, but you're only getting to your destination a tiny bit sooner, or not even.

Another thing is that I do things a lot better when I do them slower. Often I even take less time doing something slower because I don't make as many mistakes.

I don't know Carl Honore's book by the way, I'll look it up!

More and more I realise that the aspirational upper middle class goals in my / all cultures are based around having time - usually time bought at the proce of other people doing the donkey work for you.

So the donkey work is kinda magical?

Always had been!

Nah the donkey work, cooking, cleaning, raising children, farming etc is the donkey work - and the other stuff - reading writing, scientific investigation (useful) or religious ceremonies, cultural gatekeeping, oppression (useless) or war making (grey area)

There is a school of thought that the donkey work is just as important -- or at best unavoidable. And that you should therefore make your peace with it. https://fourpillarfreedom.com/chop-wood-carry-water/

I suspect that many techies come to book reading with incorrect expectation. Outside of a limited area books are not source of hard facts,they are encoding certain mental landscapes - the reader is challenged to decode those landscapes and enjoy a walk in them.

The reading speed should be compatible with this process, re reading a book can be as pleasurable as repeating a hiking experience you had in the past.

Depends of what type of books, fiction or non-fiction, but I generally agree with the sentiment of books as an experience of the mind.

This was something I discovered in the period my wife and I (before children...) read books aloud to each other. Somehow the scenes described became more vivid as I stayed longer with each word and tried to predict vocal variations to match the mood and action unfolding.

I'm not capable of reading a good, compelling book slowly. My eye falls on a sentence for an instant, and my brain has already read it. I feel like this might not be normal? I dunno. It's not really a useful or even desirable skill, but there it is. (I can go back over a difficult passage to make sure I really understood it before going on, but that doesn't slow my overall rate much.)

But I'm confused, because the author alternates between two different things they call "reading slowly": actually reading slowly, and reading many books in parallel so you cover a lot of pages but take a long time to finish anything.

Which sounds like pointless self-flagellation to me. My reading is driven forward because I want to know what happens. Putting down a good book after 10 pages so I can read a different good book for 10 pages would feel like...I'm struggling to come up with a comparison that isn't some kind of self-denial sex fetish thing.

Different kind of books tolerate different speeds. "Easy" books (e.g. fairy tales/children books) are more forgiving at varying speeds. For more "difficult" books (e.g. older books/philosophical treatises) you have to kind of work your way up and then back and so forth, they demand to be read at a certain speed. Here the famous quote of Pascal applies more strongly: When we read too fast or too slowly, we understand nothing.

"Poems" are a great way to methodically slow down your (forced) reading speed and be aware of it. Like it is much harder to play eighth notes spot on at 40 bpm than at 220 bpm.

Maybe it is beside the point but I would also recommend modulating your reading speed by choosing different kind of books, at least for me this is more effective and easier than trying to read say LOTR "slower".

In my experience, the time taken to read a book increases super-linearly with its difficulty. A brilliant work of philosophy can take weeks of dedicated study to understand, and in the most extreme cases, entire careers. Mastering a truly difficult book can be very intellectually satisfying, and that is often part of the 'value' you get from the process. The problem is when an increase in difficulty is not matched by a commensurate increase in value, when a text is both difficult and unrewarding, and rather than being satisfied by the labour of understanding, you are repelled by the fact that it came to nil.

I don't really understand what the point of reading a novel slowly is. Some poetry is difficult and rewarding, though I can't say I've ever found any great virtue in purposefully enigmatic prose. In fact, I tend to like novels most when they are graceful, and my eyes can slide across the page with ease. Tolstoy comes to mind.

I am not a fast reader though, so maybe all of my reading is unavoidably 'slow'.

For those who 'fear' losing the plot thread and want to finish a story in one sitting, try short story anthologies or (for SFF) magazines. Or you could read them online while waiting in line or while travelling.

Gardner Dozois's sci-fi anthologies were the best. He is sorely missed, R.I.P.

This resonates so deeply with me right now.

I recently began reading Krista Tippet's 'Becoming Wise' with no expectation of what I was getting into and it must've taken me two hours to read through the first 15 pages. Not because it was difficult, but because Krista's prose is so lovely and her writing is dense with stimulating ideas and perspective. I wanted to take my time to pore over everything.

I'm the type to write in my books as I go. When the text gives me an idea I write it in the margins. When I don't understand something I write it down. When I think the author is wrong I say so and make a note. It's an approach of engaging with the book and having a conversation with an author.

I've always been a big reader, but retention is an evergreen issue for me. There's no sense in speeding through a book if I'm not going to remember it. Things forgotten is often time wasted to me.

When I speed through a convincing book I may be motivated to change my behaviors and retain a few rules-of-thumb about how to apply the book's lessons. Sometimes that's enough. But it only gives me a surface-level understanding of what I've just read. After having sped through a book I may be able to tell someone WHAT I am doing differently, but I do not have the internalized, intuitive understanding of why I am doing it. If someone were to challenge me on my new behavior or outlook I would not be able to defend my new beliefs in a robust way. It is a weak kind of authority that I've gained by reading quickly.

By taking time to slowly internalize and integrate my learnings I am on a much stronger footing to A) retain the lesson B) intuitively understand it and C) convey it to others in a way that is consistent, authoritative, and convincing.

-----

To return to Krista Tippet's 'Becoming Wise' I think I love this book. For me it is one of those rare books that resonates with me deeply and immediately. Like meeting someone and striking up an immediate friendship. I have that feeling of "You and I are going to get along just fine." It's a lovely feeling, but uncommon and it's a wonderful thing when it happens out of the blue. I am more than happy to take my time to get to know it.

I value slow reading far more than I used to. That said, one intense pleasure of fast reading is the slow unravelling of the depth of the book with each re-read. Well.. if I'm honest also learning how much you misread on the speed reading.

This is a tool to help one read slower: https://locserendipity.com/Scramble.html

People also brag about about listening to audiobooks, podcasts, or video lectures at high speed. As for me, I stick to ¼× or less for the highest quality stuff.

1/4 audio sounds weird to me. In go 2x for introductionary stuff then 1x for learning stuff, but lots of pauses to make notes.

People do talk at different speeds, personally I increase YouTube video speed sometimes, according to the creator, just to make it sound more normal/average.

Dave Jones of EEVBlog for example has quite a slow Aussie drawl, seems to have sped up over the years, and I now 'only' have it 1.25x to sound 'right', but I played the older ones at 1.75x or 2x even.

Also agree with sibling that if I want time to look at/think about something or let it sink in, I'm more inclined to pause than run the whole thing at a slower speed. I suppose that could be different for a fiction audiobook say with brilliant prose you want to slowly wash over you... I don't really listen to things that I could read (at any speed I like (and can)) personally, but I can imagine that makes sense.

If I'm learning educational material, I prefer to listen at 2x speed and pause regularly when I need to ponder something.

I can't learn well at low speed because I'm apt to zone out and start my own train of thought, necessitating a rewind.

Obligatory ChatGpt thread?

What are the advantages of reading slowly?

1. Improved comprehension: Reading slowly gives you time to process the information you’re taking in, which translates into better understanding of the material.

2. Improved retention: When you’re taking your time to absorb what you’re reading, you’re more likely to remember it.

3. Increased focus: Slowing down gives you the opportunity to really focus on the material and stay engaged in the reading process.

4. Reduced stress: Taking your time to read can help reduce the stress of trying to comprehend and remember large amounts of information quickly.

5. Improved enjoyment: The slower pace of reading can help you to appreciate the story or content more and make the reading experience more enjoyable.

Difuf

Farel nisa

This article reads to me that people who read quickly are braggarts and those who read slowly are pompous.

There's a joy to doing things slowly just so much as there is a joy of doing things quickly. Reminds me of the Francis Bacon? quote:

> Some books should be tasted, some devoured, but only a few should be chewed and digested thoroughly.

The important thing is you've found a way to feel superior to both. ;)

Haha, the human condition I suppose!

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