As niche jobs go, don’t you think it could be compelling to be the researcher tasked with studying the gaze and brain activity of a group of readers as they embark on a novel? Would the data confirm that while some eyes dart and dance their way across the page, others linger and widen as the prose packs its punch? How is it that some readers are on the very last chapter while others are still caressing the blurb? And ultimately, would the findings show a field of emotional responses narrow or wide?
When quizzed about their consumption of novels, it’s fair to assume there would be some souls in the cohort who’d bemoan a glacial rate of reading – those who can no more contemplate prolific-paced book clubs than recurring nightmares dominated by towers of schoolbooks. Beyond frustrating, for sure, if there’s so much you long to read.
Yet natural as it is to surmise that the speedy readers, the ones licking through books at a rate of knots, are the champs here, perhaps it’s time for a reframe. For Team Slowcoach, a more comforting analogy might be a speedboat and a swimmer in a sea of fiction. The speedboat might look more thrilling (and will undoubtedly get there quicker), but in reality it only bounces on and off the water with the odd splash. Meanwhile, the swimmer submerges in the depths of the narrative in freestyle, and is rewarded with a many-layered underworld that leaves the skin tingling long after. In other words, maybe by savouring fiction rather than wolfing it down, slower-paced readers might be experiencing their lit in a more immersive, ultimately more transcendent way.
An ability to read quickly has its place, of course. It can be an enviable skill to pull out of the hat when you need to cherry-pick non-fiction for gist and efficiency – perhaps in a work or study context. But when it comes to fictitious prose, all that can be turned on its head. If you devour a novel at breakneck mph, you are less likely to experience the narrative as the author intended you to, leaving story-sprinters with a significantly shorter straw. Here’s why.
The rewards of deep reading
When you engage in slower reading practices, not only does it make for a more calming rhythm that your blood pressure will thank you for, you can also expect to understand more; studies suggest that the higher the number of words you read per minute, the more compromised the comprehension may be. Equally, thanks to the cognitive effort that slow reading entails, you can expect to retain more afterwards.
Gentle pace also allows the reader to go beyond just grasping the nuts and bolts of plot, and towards reading – between the lines – the more evocative and nuanced aspects of the book, explains Ronan McDonald, a professor at the University of Melbourne’s school of culture and communication. ‘Novels like Middlemarch, To the Lighthouse or the short story collection Dubliners repay slowness because meaning is not concentrated in plot alone, but in tone, rhythm, hesitation and implication. These are qualities you can’t rush without losing,’ he says.
In addition, cerebral pausing has the superpower to open the door to emotional responses, perhaps elucidating and validating the reader’s own feelings or shining a light on how others see and feel the world – perspectives and empathy you may otherwise not have the opportunity to gain.
Igniting the senses
Yet perhaps the most thrilling prize of all for the unrushed is the joy of immersion. Slow readers’ brains can bewitch them into something more experiential than just being the passive observer: the feeling that you’re right there with the protagonists in the thick of the action. When the senses are engaged in a slow and deep read it’s not a stretch to say that you could taste the gruel in Oliver Twist, breathe in Agnes’ fragrant forest in Hamnet, feel the chill in Narnia or hear the labour of coal-choked breath in Small Things Like These. Whether it’s the sparky ping-pong of direct dialogue or a nail-biting, clinging-to-a-cliff predicament, science tells us that when you’re deeply engaged in what you’re reading, the same areas of the brain light up as if you were experiencing the situation in real life.
Faster and faster
Trouble is, these days there’s an increasing number of people in the speedboat and fewer swimming. It will come as no surprise to hear there’s a new kid on the block standing in the way of slow consumption: the digital age. Amid today’s torrent of URLs, social-media platforms and hyperinformation, we’ve become accustomed to instant gratification. We consume the written word in short form, as punchy headlines and hooks, with a steady stream of images that do the heavy lifting for us. As a result, when you try to turn your attention to lengthier, denser, pictureless prose, the brain can seem less able to focus.
‘We might have noticed how the quality of our attention has changed,’ says Maryanne Wolf in her book Reader Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World. ‘Like a phantom limb, you remember who you were as a reader but cannot summon that “attentive ghost” with the joy you once felt in being transported somewhere outside the self to that interior space.’ The tendency now is to skim and scan, explains Wolf, many readers now using an F or Z patterned eye gaze, in which they read the whole of the first line before word-spotting vertically or diagonally when it comes to the rest of the page.
If that sounds too bleak a forecast of your future digestion of novels, there is good news. Reader, if you suspect you’re going too fast or simply not getting into the deep waters of a narrative, it’s good to know that it is entirely possible – with continued practice and patience – to regain the joy of slow reading. A quiet act of resistance in an ever-accelerating world. Pick up a novel and try turning its pages less hurriedly. Do report back (no time soon).
Savour every sentence
How to slow down and achieve a transcendent reading experience
Less is more
Consider the sparsity of books in centuries gone by, or the fact that stories like Dickens’ were often dripped to the public in instalments – the anticipation fever pitch. Remember too how in school lit class, you were taught to pore over a single passage, considering each word. That’s all a far cry from the consumer age of abundance where bookshops can feel like a direct call-to-action to read the lot. Hone in instead on just one novel, each page its own work of art. ‘The value of slow reading lies not in volume, but in the kind of attention it cultivates: sustained, receptive and open to ambiguity,’ affirms Ronan.
Read in print
Even before you’ve opened it, a book in the hand can provide a comfort as gentle as a whisper in a loud world. Enjoy the rhythmic turning of pages, even the smell of paper. Compared to screen reading, eyestrain is reduced, and the mind dissociates from all other fast and furious activities performed digitally. Ever noticed that you remember roughly where on the page an engaging part of the prose was? That’s because print gives you more spatial awareness, mapping, where screens don’t. And anyway, there can be no sight quite as visually alluring as an array of spines on a bookshelf – beauty as precious as a cabinet of trinkets.
Make time and space
Even with the most robust setting of intentions, a novel can sit unopened week after week with no higher function than a bedside coaster. Though it’s easier said than done to find more reading time, maybe it’s possible if you substitute scrolling time for a novel – ideally as physically distanced from the rest of life’s distractions as possible. Extra gains are up for grabs if you can read during the day (increased focus), as well as if you can pick up your novel daily. Once you start to notice how narratives walk alongside you, there can be a sense that something’s missing on days you don’t read.
Read it aloud – why not?
When we read silently, some of us hear each word in our heads (known as IRV or internal reader voice), so why not read out loud for a change and see what happens? It can help you to slow down, inhabit characters, add drama and bring a book to life – perhaps because you’re inclined to read in a less monotone way, just as parents read to children. And although reading is considered a solitary activity, reading out loud can be a shared pleasure too – with partners, friends, at a book club. After all, in a world before television and when literacy rates were lower, early texts were often meant to be heard rather than seen and it was common for people to read to each other almost performatively – in the parlour, in taverns, on trains.
Be pencil-ready
Sometimes a novel has such resonance that you want to go right back to the beginning and read it again, perhaps finding another rich seam you missed before. Other times, it’s a visceral reaction to just one sentence: beauty, clarity, wisdom or knowledge so vital you can’t contemplate losing sight of it. When prose lights you up from the inside in this way, make a pencil mark so that you can read it again and again. Draw maps, family trees or ideas of your own on your bookmark; like branches, books can take you on learning journeys and adventures. You could take it to the extreme: Hunter S Thompson is said to have typed out the whole of The Great Gatsby and A Farewell to Arms in the hope of transposing the magic to his own pen. It worked, though. He went on to write Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.