kfitz

On Reading Slowly

This recent post by vika has made me uncomfortably conscious of the slowness with which the pile of books I’d planned on reading this summer is diminishing — or, more accurately, the alarming speed with which it’s growing, as the research reading list is getting added to much more rapidly than the actual reading is getting done. To a certain extent, I think, this is to be expected, accounted for under the old “the more I learn, the more I understand how little I know” adage; as one source always leads to many others, research begets research in exponential fashion. Moreover, research always seems to expand to fill the time-vessel in which it’s contained.

But there are other factors in my growing pile of to-be-read material that I find less-than-happy, not least of which is the snail’s pace at which I’m turning the pages lately. The positive explanation for this is that I read more carefully than I used to, and take copious notes, which is a time-consuming process. On my less optimistic days, though, I wind up blaming what seems to me my painfully short attention span: I sit down to read whatever I happen to be working through, get a couple of pages in, and feel the uncontrollable desire to check my e-mail, or my net stats, or these here blog comments. I lack focus, brain divided among too many pieces of reading and writing to keep any in full view for very long.

Is this a symptom of the age, or is this what my eighth-grade English teacher used to refer to as “a personal problem” (as in, “I couldn’t finish my homework, Mrs. Collins, because I had to study for my math test.” “Sounds like a personal problem to me”)? For better or for worse, we all multi-task, and often not all that efficiently — but is my distraction just a part of life in the networked world, or does it reveal a lack of discipline (and one I’d be well advised to keep to myself, at that)?

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