Slow Reading

On reading one paragraph in an hour, and why that is sometimes the right speed.

There is a way of reading that I think of as consumption — finishing a book the way you finish a meal, in courses, the speed determined by how hungry you are. And there is a way of reading I think of as slow reading, which is what happens when one paragraph stops you for an hour.

The slow paragraph is a strange thing. You read it, you reach the period, and instead of moving to the next paragraph you find your eyes have stopped. You re-read the sentence before. Something in it doesn’t fit, or fits too well, or has opened onto something you didn’t expect. You set the book down on your knee. You look out the window. After a while you pick the book up and read the paragraph again.

Why we don’t usually do this

The pull of the next page is strong. Reading is one of the few activities in modern life with a clearly marked finish line, and the gravity of that line bends every paragraph toward “let me get to the next one.” We’re trained, mostly by the schools that taught us to read, to mistake progress through pages for understanding.

Slow reading reverses the polarity. It says: the paragraph you stopped at is the one that actually matters. The next one is just there to keep you going if you finish with this one. Stay.

The richest of the senses is the sense of having taken a long time to read one thing.¹

What it feels like

There is a slight panic, when you first try it, about all the books you aren’t reading while you sit with this one paragraph. There are so many books! And here you are, fifteen minutes deep into one paragraph, making no measurable progress.

The panic passes if you let it. What replaces it, in my experience, is not exactly pleasure but something steadier — the sense of being inside a thought rather than next to it. That sense is the entire point of reading. It is what reading is for.

The page count is a means. The thought is the end.