Comment by mrsrobin on 26/03/2018 at 15:47 UTC*

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View submission: Drop Everything And Read: Week 1

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Day 5

Date: 26 March, Monday

Times: 8:30-9 (?), 10-10:30pm

Book: The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction by Alan Jacobs (0-50%)

A very timely book. More people need to read it. I'll try to summarize what I've read so far:

• "Read at Whim". Read because you want to, for your enjoyment, rather than primarily for intellectual improvement. On the claims that reading is supposed to make you a better person and improve your morals, Terry Eagleton: "many people were indeed deep in high culture [during Word War II], but [...] this had bit prevented some of them from engaging in such activities as superintending the murder of Jets in central Europe."

• gives an example of a critic who read books as his career-- he knew that to keep sane he also had to read books for fun.

• read even what some people call "unsophisticated". Example is Harold Bloom, a literary critic, he thinks Harry Potter fans are "nonreaders" and shakes his head that they aren't reading "superior fare". Fck that. This author doesn't agree with that either.

• if you like a certain work, try to read "upstream", meaning the older books that may have influenced it. Quote from Kipling: "if we devote ourselves exclusively to modern literature -- we get to think the world is progressing when it is only repeating itself. [...] it is only when one reads what men wrote long ago that one realizes how absolutely modern the best of old things are."

• the author advises one to make notes while reading, but keep a balance: not to get into your own thoughts too much that you lose the flow of the main text. He doesn't really like highlighting, they're like a low level kind of interaction. I guess like on FB there just a Like or on Reddit an Upvote, instead of taking the time and effort to think about a decent comment which helps you solidify and organize your own thoughts. He laments that some books don't have enough margin space for any notes.

• he has a Kindle and mentions some differences in the experience of note-taking -- you can't really encircle or star things... You're limited in the ways you can interact with the page. On the other hand it's nice to have a summary of all your notes and highlights in one place.

• one side effect of scribbling your notes in your own books is encountering your past self's reaction, which the author days sometimes makes him cringe. He wants to erase them sometimes but it's also a good record of how his reading tastes have changed over the years.

• don't be obsessed with reading speed. Better to read slowly but with more comprehension.

• this is a funny part I enjoyed: if you want to read trashy stuff BUT also want to appear smart at parties, just read a few Wikipedia pages on the topic "in order to impress people whose opinion you shouldn't be deferring to anyhow", then go home and go back to reading what you actually enjoy.

• many people who want to read faster tend to read in an "uploading data" style, such as when reading for school. But if you read only to extract the information, you miss out on a lot of things (lovey language or subtle ideas) vs if you slow down. (Personally I noticed this when listening to an audiobook vs something I read. There are so many things I hadn't noticed because I just wanted to finish quickly. I'm really guilty of skimming when I'm bored.)

• author touches on how our technology has affected our ability to concentrate. "I get twitchy within just a few minutes of sitting down with a book--I have noticed that my hand will start reaching for my iPhone without my consciously telling it to". Interesting that what seemed to have helped him concentrate again was getting a Kindle. "The technology generates an inertia that makes it significantly easier to keep reading that to do anything else. [...] E-readers [...] promote linearity." Basically nakakatamad to do other things on the Kindle, so he just ends up reading. Then "I found my ability to concentrate, and concentrate for long periods of time, restored almost instantly."

• he says other social media is addicting because of the power of "what BF Skinner called 'intermittent reinforcement'". I can relate so much to why I'm addicted to Reddit: I keep on refreshing to find something interesting, or hoping that I'll see that orange envelope in my inbox.

• "We already know what we need to do if we want to get back to reading slowly and attentively. Shut down the computer ; put aside the cellphone."

• cultivating attentiveness, our ability to concentrate, as opposed to "multitasking" (which is not good because it "results in a state of 'continuous partial attention'") is important because then if we give something our full attention, we can be deeply lost in a book, and "such raptness is deeply satisfying."

• "This is what makes 'readers', as opposed to 'people who read'. To be lost in a book is genuinely addictive : someone who has had it a few times wants it again".

There are so many more things I highlighted, more than I can type now (I'm just on my phone) so I just urge you all to find a copy of this book and give it a go. Sorry this was long.

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