I’ve been doing more reading and less writing this week with this article in mind.

At a time when people spend much of their time skimming websites, text messages and e-mails, an English professor at the University of New Hampshire is making the case for slowing down as a way to gain more meaning and pleasure out of the written word.

Thomas Newkirk isn’t the first or most prominent proponent of the so-called “slow reading” movement, but he argues it’s becoming all the more important in a culture and educational system that often treats reading as fast food to be gobbled up as quickly as possible.

I spend so much of my day reading. Well, “reading.” We all do. We read Facebook, twitter, news headlines, emails, magazine articles, news headlines scrolling underneath talking heads on tv, billboards, menus, advertisements, ingredient lists, road signs, etc. When I stop to think about how many words pass before my eyes each day, it is overwhelming.

Shouldn’t this be paradise for someone like me who loves to read? No. It’s exhausting!

Music is my first love but only because I learned how to listen before I learned how to read. I was (am?) like Henry Bemis with relatively good eyesight and social skills. When I was a kid, I hid books under my desk and read during math classes. I would read at restaurants after I ordered until the food came. I would carefully close my bedroom door and read by the faint light of my night light. I still remember the thrill of going to the bookstore to spend my allowance money.

Now in the thick of information overload, it’s hard to maintain a genuine reading practice. It’s a discipline I am bound and determined to keep up. Three years ago, I realized I was almost exclusively reading new fiction and memoirs. I was blowing through books like boxes of candy after a breakup. I made a commitment to reading classics and revisiting some of the books I was required to read in school to make sure I kept in touch with the literary roots. I was inspired by Azar Nafisi’s story. She wrote Reading Lolita in Tehran.

I had the pleasure and honor of escorting Azar Nafisi during her speaking engagement where I work. It was one of my favorite nights at work.
At a reception, two women told her that their book club read her book and all the books that she discussed in the memoir. Azar Nafisi likened the book club movement to a global women’s revolution. I love that. Revolution!

The dinner was full of men and women with her story. Hugs, kisses, and tears. During the book signing, Azar brought a picture of the women from her book and asked me to turn it over if anyone took a photo. Meeting someone who took such risks for the freedom of access to literature was extremely humbling and made me realize how much I take for granted.

The next day, I went to the library and got reacquainted with F. Scott Fitzgerald.

I’m still on track. Last week, my affair with Anna Karenina came to an end. I loved it, but reading that book took serious mental discipline. I really noticed how my reading habits have changed, how easily I succumb to skimming when it seems like Russian men are endlessly arguing politics, religion, and economics. More than a couple times, I forced myself to slow down and take time to read what seemed like a thick passage and turned up some beautiful and insightful writing.

I’m joining the slow reading movement. What’s next on the reading list?

Instead of posting a relevant song or Youtube, I’ll end with a really great morsel from Tolstoy. I read it over and over and it made me laugh out loud each time.

He had an ability to understand art and to imitate it faithfully, tastefully, and thought he had precisely what was needed for an artist. After some hesitation over what kind of painting he would choose – religious, historical, genre or realistic – he started to paint. He understood all kind and could be inspired by one or another; but he could not imagine that one could be utterly ignorant of all the kinds of painting and be inspired directly by what was in one’s soul, unconcerned whether what one painted belonged to any particular kind. Since he did not know that, and was inspired not directly by life but indirectly by life already embodied in art, he become inspired very quickly and easily, and arrived as quickly and easily at making what he painted look very much like the kind of art he wanted to imitate. (p. 465-466. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy translated by Richard Pevear & Larissa Volokhonsky)