A new year often signals a fresh TBR (To Be Read) pile. It brims with good intentions, guilt divided evenly between Christmas gifts begging to be addressed and the books from 2023 you thought you had time to read but didn’t. But — of course — reading shouldn’t be a chore, an endless game of catch-up or a slog powered by a sense that you’re missing out on the best of the year’s crop.
In the wonderful phrase of a friend, perhaps it’s time to set an anti-resolution instead — to settle into a slow classic, and give yourself the gift of unrushed reading. Spending time in the pages of just one book for months, sometimes years, is a rarity in our hurried age.
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I don’t even remember what class it was, but whoever taught me the skill of slow reading has my gratitude. Reading fast is very clearly fun, but slow reading can be equally as fun, and I wouldn’t have expected that.
I’ve been reading the swedish translation of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance together with my girlfriend. We sit next to each other in the couch with the book between us and read out the sentences to each other. First I read, then she repeats the same sentence. She’s learning swedish pronounciation and melody. In the more philosophy heavy pages we often comment on how it relates to Plato or anything that comes to mind. It’s a great conversation, and a great way to read this book.
Really,who reads so slow?
Many people do, myself included. I myself am just not capable of reading fast for some reason, but other people may just want to take more time to analyse prose or certain aspects of the story. For older books you may want to do some research about society in the time that it was written, for a book like Crime and Punishment you may want to think about the symbolism.
In short, there are many reasons to read slow, so many people do it.
Thanks!! Now is makes more sense! :D
The reason you can’t read fast might be dyslexia. I am incapable of reading fast too, and after i got diagnosed with ADD and dyslexia it all just made sense
I forgot to mention it, but I have ADD too, so that is definitely a big contributing factor!
Yeah, it probably is. Hopefully it all makes a bit more sense now
It will give you more perspectives ideas and different aspects. I takes almost 1-2 months to read a book And this is strange, i lags not just in books but films too it takes me 2 days or more to complete a 2 hour film
Okay, I understand now. :)
