If springtime leads to thoughts of love (or so the poets say), then for book-lovers, summertime can lead to thoughts of reading. What books shall we read while sitting in the garden with a cool drink or lounging beside the pool, or pack in our suitcase for vacation? Perhaps this summer will be the time when we finally read that book we’ve been meaning to read all these years. Unfortunately, aspiration does not always survive contact with reality, and all too often, the summer ends without reading the books we intended and hoped to read—or perhaps without reading any books at all. Is this an indication to give it up as a lost cause, and resign ourselves to scrolling on our phones? No, dear reader, it is not, I assure you. There is a better way. We can read more—and we’ll be glad when we do.
To start with, considering why we tend to have difficulty sustaining our reading can help us move forward.
A significant factor for many of us is that phones and social media tend to habituate us to short attention spans and overstimulation. When most of what we read is in tiny snippets—a text message, a social media update, a headline—we come unconsciously to expect that everything we read will be short, so we get bored and skip ahead if it’s longer. More insidiously, social media algorithms are tuned to keep us engaged, and companies have realized that negative engagement is even more addictive than positive engagement. Much of social media is built on the premise that making us feel angry, envious, or resentful will keep us scrolling, clicking, and buying things we don’t really need or want.
Furthermore, as Neil Postman presciently put it in his book Amusing Ourselves to Death, television (and now to an even greater degree, social media) teaches us to expect our flow of entertainment to be made up of bits of unrelated content; the next show, news item, or post in our feed has no meaningful connection to what came before or what comes after. News of a disaster is followed by a cute pet video; a cooking show is followed by a crime drama. If this were a conversation, we’d be disconcerted by the abrupt change of subject and tone, but when we’re scrolling, we accept the randomness of it. This media environment conditions us to become bored and distracted when we attempt to turn our attention toward something that requires sustained focus.
Why should algorithms designed to serve a mega-corporation’s interests dictate what we read and think about?
The good news is that we are not passive lumps (unless we choose to be). We can choose to build up better, healthier, and ultimately much more satisfying habits. I’m not suggesting that it’s all or nothing. Social media does have positive value when used wisely, as when we use it for catching up with friends, participating in groups focused on hobbies, our community, or our faith, or organizing events. We just want to prevent it from taking over our lives and dominating our attention, like weeds in a garden.
Reading takes more effort, to be sure, but it is correspondingly more rewarding than passive media consumption. For one thing, reading puts us back in control of our own minds. Why should algorithms designed to serve a mega-corporation’s interests dictate what we read and think about?
It’s important to recognize that we can’t change our habits in an instant. We need to build up our attention muscles. Doing so gradually will prevent frustration and enable us to enjoy what we’re reading more fully.
Now let me offer five practical suggestions for how you can break out of the distraction-rut and start reading more—and more enjoyably.
1) Start small.
Just as you wouldn’t expect to run a marathon the day after you resolve to improve your fitness, don’t expect to be able to set down your phone and immediately become immersed in an 800-page novel. Now, depending on the novel, and on your personality, this might actually work for you, and if it does, that’s great! But the “jump in the deep end” approach can be discouraging. Instead, start with something short, so that you can have the satisfaction of starting and finishing something, repeatedly. Build up your attention muscles!
2) Begin in your comfort zone.
It’s good to stretch as a reader (and I’ll have more to say about that in a later article), but the early stage of building up a reading habit is not the time to climb the literary equivalent of Mount Everest. The Divine Comedy and The Brothers Karamazov are not going anywhere.
3) Read with a guide.
Look for a good edition of a book that has an introduction or other supporting materials, written by someone who knows and appreciates the content. Avoid free ebooks and cheap, print-on-demand titles; not only are they usually physically less attractive and harder to read, with small fonts and lots of typos, but they don’t offer any support for appreciating the book. By contrast, a book that has an introduction or other notes or materials can greatly enhance the reading experience. For instance, Malcolm Guite’s anthologies of poetry, such as Love, Remember, include insightful, short reflections on each poem. The volume of Gerard Manley Hopkins’s poetry that I edited, As Kingfishers Catch Fire, has an introduction and annotations. For fiction, publishing lines such as Oxford World’s Classics have interesting and useful introductions and explanatory notes that enhance stories such as Anthony Trollope’s Barchester novels (the first volume of which, The Warden, is short and fits nicely with suggestion #1).
4) Reread old favorites.
Familiarity, along with the positive associations that come from reading a book you previously enjoyed, can be a powerful force for good, helping get you past the distraction stage and into the reading groove. What’s more, re-reading is a great way to get more out of a book. I am a regular rereader of books, including ones that are not “classics” but are simply books I enjoyed once and enjoy revisiting.
5) Read with a friend, children, or a community.
Parents: Reading to your kids counts as reading! Book clubs can be a great way to get into the reading habit as well, since it gives you a motivation to read and a built-in context to talk about it. The book club might be an informal gathering in your local area, or online (the Word on Fire Institute has a book club, for instance). In general, if you can enlist a friend to read the same book you are reading, it greatly enhances enjoyment, as you can talk about it—and it gives an excuse or a motivation to meet up with that friend as well. In our busy, overscheduled, distracted lives, we need to connect with our friends and family; it’s all too easy to let it slip. Reading in parallel and then meeting up for a cup of coffee, a glass of wine, or a meal to chat about the book is a way of building up another virtuous cycle: connecting with friends in a meaningful way.
Happy reading!