I never imagined that, at the ripe old age of 26, I’d find myself dedicating a significant amount of my time to learning how to read.
Thanks to the deleterious effects of the Internet and more than a decade of constant rushing to complete daily tasks, the act of sitting down for any sustained amount of time and training my gaze on the printed word feels impossible — and perhaps even a bit counter-cultural.
As I’ve written before for Chapter House, my love of books has been with me since my youth, and in most ways it’s been a real blessing. Yet the more I reflect on my reading habits, the more obvious it becomes that I must teach myself anew how to read the way I wish I could, the way I once did.
My problems in this arena are manifold. First, the central issue: I’ve spent most of my life with a stack of at least eleven books next to my bed, each one with a bookmark firmly lodged about halfway through the pages. No amount of effort seems to enable me to whittle down the pile nor to work my way through it effectively.
I’ve come to believe there are two kinds of readers. There are those who begin a book and faithfully persevere, refusing to crack open another title until they’ve read through the closing pages of the first. I admire this sort tremendously, though in my heart I feel a little twinge of pity for what seems to me like the narrowed horizon before them.
Thanks to the deleterious effects of the Internet and more than a decade of constant rushing to complete daily tasks, the act of sitting down for any sustained amount of time and training my gaze on the printed word feels impossible — and perhaps even a bit counter-cultural.
Then there are those like me, who, in the very act of reading one book, are reminded of another one we had tried to begin the week before or one we had been meaning to add to an ever-growing reading list. No sooner does the thought occur to us than the first book has been cast aside and we’re off on a hunt, combing through the nearest bookshelf for the relevant title — or, worse yet, off to Amazon to “wish list” the desired item.
If I make it back to the book I abandoned before the week’s out, I regard it as a little miracle.
Though I find that I still manage to read plenty of books in spite of this frailty, I often daydream about how it might feel simply to read the book right in front of me, to deny myself the pleasure of a new genre or second option until I’ve managed to finish the first.
Part of the obstacle is the innate desire always to read more, more at once, to satiate curiosity or keep the mind agile by focusing on more than one story or topic at a time. Another part of the trouble stems, at least in my case, from the way I’ve accidentally trained my mind to require constant stimulation in order to remain engaged.
I wrote last year that I found my attention span growing hardier the less time I spent on Twitter. When flexing a mind weakened by constant-click syndrome, merely keeping the eyes directed at the page demands immense fortitude. So, I’ve found myself learning to read, again.
[T]he more I reflect on my reading habits, the more obvious it becomes that I must teach myself anew how to read the way I wish I could, the way I once did.
I have mostly given up trying to force myself to be a one-book-at-a-time reader; the half-finished stacks will always be with me. The more fruitful path, I believe, is to teach myself to read as I did when I was young, before I knew what it felt like to have a mind scattered by concerns and searching for the next quick hit of dopamine.
If you suffer like I do from this affliction, I’ve found that the best cure is the simplest one, yet perhaps the hardest to find: a substantial chunk of time, a place far away from any screens, and a book so compelling you’ll forget everything else.
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