News and Media

The Lost Art of Reading

A book reviewer comments on the intrusion of the Internet

The problem is technology, the endless distractions of the Internet, the breakdown of authority in an age of blogs and Twitter, the collapse of narrative in a hyper-linked, multi-networked world.”

The Lost Art Of Reading: Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time
by David Ulin

Sometime late last year — I don’t remember when, exactly — I noticed I was having trouble sitting down to read. That’s a problem if you do what I do, but it’s an even bigger problem if you’re the kind of person I am. So what happened? It isn’t a failure of desire so much as one of will. Or not will, exactly, but focus: the ability to still my mind long enough to inhabit someone else’s world, and to let that someone else inhabit mine.



Reading is an act of contemplation, perhaps the only act in which we allow ourselves to merge with the consciousness of another human being. Books enlarge us by giving direct access to experiences not our own. In order for this to work, however, we need a certain type of silence, an ability to filter out the noise. 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.”


David L. Ulin is the former book critic of the Los Angeles Times. A 2015 Guggenheim Fellow, he is the author or editor of nine books, including The Lost Art of Reading: Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time. Read the full articleThis excerpt from an article in the Los Angeles Times. August 2009 © 2009 – 2016


Topics: Brain, Reading, Science

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Sir Tom Stoppard
Playwright
And the Winner in Montserrat is....
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At the moment that we persuade a child, any child to cross...that magic threshold into a library, we change their lives forever.

BARACK OBAMA

It is by acts and not ideals that people live.

ANATOLE FRANCE
Author (1844-1924)

A good book is the best of friends, the same today and forever.

MARTIN TUPPER
Author (1810-1889)

All I know is what I have words for.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Start some kind words on its travels. There is no telling where the good it may do will stop.

Sir Wilfred Grenfell
Humanitarian, Medical Missionary (1865-1940)

If you believe what you read...you can, quite literally, believe anything.

NORTHROP FRYE
Professor, Philosopher (1912-1991)

Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.

WILLIAM JAMES
Philosopher, Psychologist (1842-1910)
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Literacy is, finally, the road to human progress and the means through which every man, woman and child can realize his or her full potential.

KOFI ANNAN
Secretary-General of the United Nations (1997-2006)
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Too many people grow up. That's the trouble with the world.

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(1901-1966)
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I read. I travel. I become.

DEREK WALCOTT
St. Lucian author & 1992 Nobel Laureate
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If we want to make this world a better place, then we have to become better ourselves. There is no easy route.

DALAI LAMA

Reading brings us unknown friends.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Novelist (1799-1850)

Life is too deep for words so don't try to describe it, just live it.

C. S. Lewis
Author, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

The future is always beginning now. Each moment is a place you've never been.

MARK STRAND
Poet (1934-2014)
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