love all of your writings - with the intention & focus on enjoying them. but despite that, this one was like a breeze of fresh air because I can so relate and celebrate you talking about this reading-darkside ;-)
I love this! Bulimia for the brain, electric scooters zooming through a museum... The imagery is perfect and I totally agree with your reflections.
I'm going to add a quote from Epictetus who would have also agreed.
"Don't just say you have read books. Show that through them you have learned to think better, to be a more discriminating and reflective person. Books are the training weights of the mind. They are very helpful but It would be a bad mistake to suppose that one has made progress just by having internalised their contents."
What a great quote, I hadn't read it until now. And it made me ponder on the various meanings of 'discriminating' - I will speculate that it started off as a positive concept and evolved into the negative one we use today... Something to research on! :)
You analogy with food is perfect. I would happily join a "Slow Reading Club" ;)
I stopped updating my reading progress in Goodreaders long time ago, not that I ever wanted to be a speed reader, not even close, but because even the pressure of sharing that I was reading a particular book felt too annoying to me. I want to have the freedom to spend three months to finish a book, or not finishing it at all. Even more, I confess I like re-visiting books I've already read, but I'm an amateur compared to a friend that, after reading his share of books, is now only re-reading his selection of masterpieces, for the second, the third, the four time... :0
I can let you in my own 'slow reading' club ;) I'm probably the slowest reader I know.
Your friend is onto something, but there are so many good books I want to read that I'll probably save re-reading for my next life. :) That's why I use Goodreads really, to keep a track of all the books I want to read.
Thanks for sharing this article with me Monica. I appreciated getting to see your perspective on this topic and I agree that reading for numbers misses the point. I particularly enjoyed the etymology as I do believe it is important to understand where our words come from.
I will say that I think a person can be a voracious reader and not be focused on numbers. Different people will naturally read at different speeds. Nothing wrong with that. I think the issue becomes when the focus becomes the number of books. Even a person who is a "slow reader" could miss out if they were trying to reach some arbitrary numerical goal without really retaining what they read.
Excellent … “Reading fast is like going on an electric scooter through a museum and claiming you’ve seen all the paintings.” … such a good way of putting it. And the etymology 👌🏻
love all of your writings - with the intention & focus on enjoying them. but despite that, this one was like a breeze of fresh air because I can so relate and celebrate you talking about this reading-darkside ;-)
Thanks so much, Beate, for your kind words! Glad to hear you relate to this one, so I wasn't the only one who found it bizzare ;-)
I love this! Bulimia for the brain, electric scooters zooming through a museum... The imagery is perfect and I totally agree with your reflections.
I'm going to add a quote from Epictetus who would have also agreed.
"Don't just say you have read books. Show that through them you have learned to think better, to be a more discriminating and reflective person. Books are the training weights of the mind. They are very helpful but It would be a bad mistake to suppose that one has made progress just by having internalised their contents."
Yay for the Stoics! 😊
What a great quote, I hadn't read it until now. And it made me ponder on the various meanings of 'discriminating' - I will speculate that it started off as a positive concept and evolved into the negative one we use today... Something to research on! :)
Absolutely. The adjective discriminating still means of good judgement or regined taste, as in, "She is a discriminating collector of books." ;-).
You analogy with food is perfect. I would happily join a "Slow Reading Club" ;)
I stopped updating my reading progress in Goodreaders long time ago, not that I ever wanted to be a speed reader, not even close, but because even the pressure of sharing that I was reading a particular book felt too annoying to me. I want to have the freedom to spend three months to finish a book, or not finishing it at all. Even more, I confess I like re-visiting books I've already read, but I'm an amateur compared to a friend that, after reading his share of books, is now only re-reading his selection of masterpieces, for the second, the third, the four time... :0
I can let you in my own 'slow reading' club ;) I'm probably the slowest reader I know.
Your friend is onto something, but there are so many good books I want to read that I'll probably save re-reading for my next life. :) That's why I use Goodreads really, to keep a track of all the books I want to read.
Thanks for sharing this article with me Monica. I appreciated getting to see your perspective on this topic and I agree that reading for numbers misses the point. I particularly enjoyed the etymology as I do believe it is important to understand where our words come from.
I will say that I think a person can be a voracious reader and not be focused on numbers. Different people will naturally read at different speeds. Nothing wrong with that. I think the issue becomes when the focus becomes the number of books. Even a person who is a "slow reader" could miss out if they were trying to reach some arbitrary numerical goal without really retaining what they read.
Good point, even slow readers can miss out on inspiring ideas or lessons.
I like the idea you have for your Substack: discussing more what the books give us and how they change us, rather than how many books we've read.
Excellent … “Reading fast is like going on an electric scooter through a museum and claiming you’ve seen all the paintings.” … such a good way of putting it. And the etymology 👌🏻