Reading real books
When the Kindle first came out I was very skeptical. I worried that turning a page was literally important to the process of reading and swore I would never get one. And then I got one. I loved it for a while. The idea of walking around with a whole library on this small slender device that was smaller than most books I owned. But what started to happen that I did not like was the difficulty in flipping back to find something. I know that it was possible to save a section. But more often than not, I would not necessarily know that I would want to go back. So that feature was not always useful. I abandoned the kindle after about 2 years. But then got very enamored with audio books. This was a great way to “read”! I told myself, I retain knowledge much better when I listen than when I read! When I read, I often dazed out and don’t remember anything I just read and have to go back! When I read it puts me to sleep! With audio books not only could I read a whole book a week, but I could rewind if I dazed out and bookmark if I wanted to. I could read while I cooked, did housework, exercised, ran errands.
But then I listened to the Ezra Klein show podcast This is Your Mind on Deep Reading with Maryanne Wolf and realized that the information was not entering my brain in the same way as reading a literal book. So I tried to start reading real books again. And found a disturbing reality. I had REALLY lost the ability to focus on what I was reading. This disturbed me so much that I made it a mission to learn to read again. It took a long time. I kept starting books and then putting them aside for so long that I forgot what they were about.
This past year I feel like I made real progress. I didn’t listen to many audio books and read several dozen REAL books. I notice myself absorbing the material much more deeply than I ever remembered it could be. It is definitely a meditative state that one goes into when immersed in a book.
But lately something almost as disturbing has come into my mind. I am ingesting so much information, but not allowing for reflection. So I started this practice today. My new mission is to write as least 500 pages a day about something I ingested that day or recently. I will be posting these reflections to my website and substack. But I may stop doing that at some point. I think the pressure to do that will keep me honest.
Thank you to Ezra Klein for having some of the most useful life lessons as podcast topics.
