Read Slowly
I think this piece is an advice to myself because I always find myself trying to read as much as possible as fast as possible, while I do DNF (Do Not Finish) some books, I always find myself in the rush to finish a book.
A tendency I picked up along the way and a tendency that also helps me brag about the amount of books I can say I have read and Recall only bits and piece and not fully digest the book, enjoy its intricate details and be able to have a dialogue surrounding its prose, characters, themes and outreach with other fellow readers who have also read the book.
I always thought the problem was mine (which I do not like to admit) only and that no one ever struggles with that, but it has come to my attention that with the rise and popularity of books due to the influence of BookTube or BookTok everyone nowadays wants to burn through as many books as possible with so little of time they have, listening to the audio book at 1.5x speed while reading the physical copy, Subscribing to a 5 minute summary newsletter, skipping bits and pieces of books or watching reviews that contain spoilers.
The root of this problems do lie deep in the underlying notion buried in all our brain that due to the current capitalistic nature of our economy reducing the time taken to do something and yielding a much higher output equals in profitability. This applies everywhere in our daily tasks and activities even though we might not tend to notice it.
So utilizing your time after your long tiring day and being able to burn through 70+ books a year, is such an amazing accomplishment because it implies that you are far better at utilizing the time you are given and on top of that you are a polymath genius with all that you have consumed, so what you will lay on moving forward is the golden egg.
Speaking from experience this is all nothing but nonsense why you ask ? because I have been there, I burned through books that if Guy Montag1 saw me he would be at ease. (see what I did there)
Learning to start reading slowly is a challenge itself because it means having to go back to the same book again and again for a certain amount of time. Which is incomparable to the heightened feeling of satisfaction that one feels after completing a book. The Writing style of the book does play a role in all this as well, Some books are highly readable, allowing you to breeze through 300–400 pages in a week, while others are denser and more complex making even a 50-page essay feel like a challenge to comprehend and finish.
While everyone’s reason for burning through a book varies reading slowly has a tons of benefits as well. As I tried to foreshadow in the introduction for me the main and number one benefit of slow reading is better memory so now you’re more likely to remember details and nuances from the text which can come in handy for academic texts and non-fiction books in general. Another benefits which I think gets thrown under the bus when one tends to burn through books is emotional connection, reading at a slower pace allows you to connect with the characters, settings and emotions conveyed in the text.
The book industry is also changing along with the times which means that in a time where everyone is hyper-stimulated and Instant {anything} is the opium for the masses they have to keep up which leads to more books published in a week, month, year adding more and more to people’s TBR (To Be Read List) and inducing FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) which signals “Unless you are done with this one quickly, you will be missing out on this new one.” Now this not only affects the reader but the authors as well.
So what is to be done? Pick up that book you been wanting to read for a while now and start reading it, don’t rush the process and withhold any judgement you have of it until the book is done, it can take you a week or weeks even months let it sink in and take your time with it.
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The main character in Fahrenheit 451 a dystopian novel written by Ray Bradbury and published in 1953 ↩