K. comes over for dinner, and as I greet him in the cold foyer, I notice a book sticking out of his coat pocket. “What are you reading?” I ask.
“Oh, I don’t know how to read,” he says, a mischievous glint in his eyes.
I know what he means, and it’s a conversation I’ve had a lot recently: how we’ve lost our ability to sit still and settle into books. It’s baffling to my self concept because I love to read. I identify as a “reader”. So, what’s going on?
In Ezra Klein’s 2022 interview with Maryanne Wolf (one of the world’s leading experts on how reading works in and on the brain), she explains that in our current age,
“… we are developing a mind-set or habit of reading in a particular way that, by and large, is based on a kind of skimming reading… because of all the information we have to process on any given day. So the habit or mind-set is now so largely influenced by us reading on screens that we take that mind-set back to print. We can build habits of mind, a kind of reading that’s after the innermost landscape of our thinking, which (we might call) a sanctuary of reading. Proust always had something amazing to say about everything. He saw the heart of reading as the place where we go beyond the wisdom of the author to discover our own.
How do we build a habit of mind, in which we decide from the start of whatever we are reading, what is the purpose? If the purpose is my shallow email, then I will skim with no guilt at all. But if… my purpose is to really understand something at ever deeper levels of its complexity or to perceive the beauty of that carefully chosen word, when we are reading for that purpose — for beauty, for understanding at the deepest level — then we have to really figure out how to… ensure that we can read on any medium with the deep reading processes as our goal.”1
While listening to this interview I was confronted with the fact that my ability to read deeply had almost entirely slipped away, and I had let it. I read for work, but that’s different. Reading writing by a client or student, I’m thinking in questions, observing how my body responds to what’s on the page, and then hoping to find a way to inspire them to further discover their wisdom, their “understanding at the deepest level”.
The average North American adult consumes 34 gigabytes of data and information every day, estimated to be the equivalent of 100,000 words read or heard (approximately the length of Tara Westover’s Educated).2 On this information overload Wolf says, “You are not using your critical analytic capacities to discern truth, and therefore, you are totally susceptible to mis - and disinformation and ultimately demagoguery. Everything I have done, which was meant to be an apologia for reading, led me to a darker insight, which is that the very act of reading has become so degraded because of the bombardment of information, because of the affordances of the particular medium, and because we have become… cognitively impatient. We don’t want to spend the time.”
I’ve been working on re-building my reading habit over the last few months, spending at least one weekend morning in bed with my book. It takes about twenty minutes to sink in to “deep reading” and then I’m usually there, in my reading sanctuary. It has become one of my favourite weekly rituals, and I look forward to it. Reading My Work by Olga Ravn3 , I realize that I’m simultaneously reflecting on my postpartum experience, marvelling at her genre-defying writing, and being swept by the prose. To go beyond skimming when I’m reading digitally, I take notes by hand (Wolf: “the graphomotor act helps my memory and consolidation”). It takes time, and effort, and sometimes I can’t believe how long it takes to get through a few paragraphs. It’s a meditation, a slowing down. I am able to more reliably retain what I’ve read. Finally, I’ve set the goal of reading forty books this year.
Anne Lamott writes, “Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul. When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or life, our buoyancy is restored.”
January’s five things
Reading: Speaking of Nature: Finding language that affirms our kinship with the natural world by Robin Wall Kimmerer. “English encodes human exceptionalism, which privileges the needs and wants of humans above all others and understands us as detached from the commonwealth of life.”
Making: I’m lucky to be collaborating on Serpent Skin Soup, a show written and performed by students at the Centre for Indigenous Theatre. It runs February 1, 2 and 3 at Aki Studio Theatre. Doors are at 7:15 p.m., and the show starts at 7:30 p.m. There is no ticket fee, but the school welcomes donations.
Listening: to Act 1 of The Words to Say It: what it means to have words - and to lose them, the most recent episode of This American Life. “The story of a woman from Gaza City who ran out of words. Seventy-two days into the war, Youmna stopped talking.”
Sharing: a year ago I wrote a love letter to timed writing practice. If you’re interested in seeing what the practice is all about there are two workshop opportunities coming up. Arise, a day-long, in-person 5Rhythms and Writing Workshop on Saturday March 9th that I am co-facilitating with my sister Layah; and Let’s Write: Spring Equinox on Sunday, March 17th, 1 - 3 p.m. EST on Zoom.
Celebrating: Caleb Stewart. 🥲
Thank you for reading, and for being here. If you enjoy five things, drop a heart or comment. Are you reading, and if so, what? Your support really makes a difference. ❤️
Translated by Jennifer Russell and Sophia Hersi Smith.
I thought, how like reading people. Reverent intimacy so lacking. We read into one another. Over one another. How common to feel skimmed over as we long to be listened to. As Thomas Hubl says, feeling felt. Habit of the Mind and habit of the heart? Thank you always for your insights Sasha.
this theme resonates, thank you sasha ♥️ curious to talk about My Work sometime! i had such mixed feelings.
reading There is no Blue by Martha Baillie and i'm stunned by it so far.