Deep reading

The Web is essentially a distraction machine.
Hyperlinks are meant to take you away from where you are.

John Miedema
Slow Reading

John Miedema makes an analogy between the slow food movement and slow reading. Just like cooking from scratch, it takes time and effort to read closely. It's the difference between a frozen pizza and one that takes an afternoon to make. Most of the things we value these days need to be done instantly. Of course cooking is just a chore, if you don't enjoy it on some basic level. Same for reading. There's a case made (and any high school teacher will agree) that endlessly skimming information and managing snippets of electronic conversation makes us dull and isolated, not smarter or socially adept.

Close reading means deliberately slowing your reading speed for enjoyment and comprehension. And there are books worth dawdling over. I was sorry to finish Jonathan Franzen's novel, Freedom. Not so much because a good story was finished, but because his writing and observations are so pleasurable and keen, even when painful to read.

Franzen's 2001 novel The Corrections was a book club favorite (yes, Oprah) but if you enjoyed it you have a reading treat ahead with Freedom. It's 562 pages long, so take your time.