Thursday, July 15, 2010

Is it time to slow our reading down?

Do you tend to scan a text or really read it? (I know someone who reads every word when reading a book! :) You know who you are *wink*) When was the last time you allowed the words from a book/text and your thought sink in? 'Cuz you see...seems like technology has kinda made us 'lazy' readers (not liking to read lengthy articles and generally just skimming/scanning it) and...well...'stupider' (kinda)

This is what I found...
"According to The Shallows, a new book by technology sage Nicholas Carr, our hyperactive online habits are damaging the mental faculties we need to process and understand lengthy textual information. Round-the-clock news feeds leave us hyperlinking from one article to the next – without necessarily engaging fully with any of the content; our reading is frequently interrupted by the ping of the latest email; and we are now absorbing short bursts of words on Twitter and Facebook more regularly than longer texts."

and...

"If you want the deep experience of a book, if you want to internalise it, to mix an author's ideas with your own and make it a more personal experience, you have to read it slowly," says Ottowa-based John Miedema, author of Slow Reading (2009)."

but...

"Some academics vehemently disagree, however. One literature professor, Pierre Bayard, notoriously wrote a book about how readers can form valid opinions about texts they have only skimmed – or even not read at all. "It's possible to have a passionate conversation about a book that one has not read, including, perhaps especially, with someone else who has not read it," he says in How to Talk About Books that You Haven't Read (2007), before suggesting that such bluffing is even "at the heart of a creative process".

What's your take on this? Please click here to read the rest of it. (Yes, I've read the entire text :P)

4 comments:

Au and Target said...

I skim bad books and read good books properly - and at least twice. Got the new Terry Pratchett and it's BRILLIANT!

A Bookaholic said...

same here...and for news, i usually just read the headlines and the first paragraph...lol hv alws wanted to try one of terry pratchett's stuff...juz dunno which one to start with :(

bunnyslave said...

is it me? well, i try not to be so perasan. but i do read almost every word of a text.

A Bookaholic said...

ya laaaa u laaaa :) Keep up the good habit bunnyslave ;)

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