Reader, come home

[supergee]

The reading brain in a digital world [Slate]

Thanx to Arts & Letters Daily

Comments

[ruthling]

what's perhaps illuminatory is that I could not read all the way through that.

[weofodthignen]

Some thoughts since someone else responded.

Like your other commentator (I imagine), I was badly put off by all the stuff Slate stuck in the middle of the article. I also wonder how typical the writer's reading history is: I suspect that even among immersive readers, tastes and reading approaches differ, and although when I taught, I was supposed to encourage engagement with the text in the forms of prediction and questioning, I always suspected this was destructive in fiction reading and not always useful in non-fiction. I've suspected for a long time that academics in literature read in a very different way from the general fiction reading audience, even from very bookish non-academics. Also the author seems to be one of those academics whose life experience hasn't involved the real-life break where the kind of free time available largely precludes immersed reading: after I started college I set aside fiction reading for pleasure, and when I was able to pick it up again it was almost entirely while commuting, so I had to be alert for threats from fellow passengers and for the approach of my stop; for years now I've avoided reading fiction because part of my reading time is at work and I have to be alert for being needed (or for someone stealing something or just opening something)—I suspect many or most workers have even less opportunity to be immersed in a book even among those who are so inclined. And internet time has taken some of that time away, even discounting for the moment the distractions built into use of the internet. Further, reactions to reading on-screen as opposed to in a print book vary. I know that with some fiction, no matter how engaging, I want to flip back to see what was said earlier (for example in mysteries, or where I've forgotten a character who reappears; I'm bad at names), and I know that screens make my eyes tired and that others have this problem either more or less than me. On the other hand many paperbacks and library rebound paperbacks, have bindings that interfere with my reading to such an extent that I find on-screen reading better; I so rarely have both hands free to hold a book open that I've sometimes used Google Books in preference to the actual non-fiction book I got from interlibrary loan, for example to edit Wikipedia—requires both hands to type and the ability to flip between pages—or to read at work—requires the book to stay open until I can come back to it without having its binding broken and most of two facing pages obscured by being weighted down with heavy objects. Also a complaint common to much research on reading for pleasure: discounting library use, and the changes in libraries in recent decades. There's a long parallel history of readers who almost never bought books, or who only became able to buy books in later life, and I would counsel against assuming this parallel group of readers has died out or persists only outside the West.

For what it's worth, I am not good at jargon but did not find the sample sentence particularly hard to parse.

M