The lost art of reading – Los Angeles Times

It’s holiday time. I’m sitting more. Reading more. But I’m also here logging time on the web. Keeping up. Tweeting, bookmarking – not wanting to lose out on … something. This article by the book editor of the Times, suggests why this trend to read less contemplatively has taken hold.

Today, it seems it is not contemplation we seek but an odd sort of distraction masquerading as being in the know. Why? Because of the illusion that illumination is based on speed, that it is more important to react than to think, that we live in a culture in which something is attached to every bit of time.

The solution? Well, my solution is to leave the screen and open the page – to keep on reading, ink on paper, physical bookmarks and coffee stains …

Of course in the holidays there are less e-distractions. No emails to plough through most of which have been forwarded to me for no other reason than that I happen to be on some list or other. No web pages to chase in order to check something or other. No feelings that I should be in the flow of rss feeds fishing out gems to pass on or follow-up. And often-times not even near a computer to check on … ? No, instead there’s time to ‘get into’ the text: the undivided attention that’s needed before you’re with it rather than outside it. When things are full-blown at work that settling time is long – now it’s the holidays I can hone in much quicker to that contemplative state. Of course, it’s also practice filtering out the buzz that says I should be ‘at my desk’ (ie computer) responding. So, is it time to impose the settling – turn the computer off, at least for half the day – in order to get some contemplative, thinking reading done?