How to be a slow reader

 I’m a slow reader who admires fast readers.

A couple of friends are speed readers, and I marvel at their ability to read a book a day. When I was a young reporter, I was sent to the courthouse to report on a blockbuster lawsuit. The brief was hundreds of pages, with several accordion files of exhibits. I had two hours until deadline.

I never took a course in speed reading, but reporters who are in over their heads learn they must sink or skim. I read the introduction and conclusion of the lawsuit to find out what the Justice Department wanted. I read the first sentence of each paragraph, the topic sentence. I read whole paragraphs selectively.

It’s a brutal way to handle any text: to go at it with the goal of extracting information quickly. But we live in a world full of litigation and government reports that involve the public interest. I’m glad there are people in the world who try to keep the rest of us informed.

But when I talk about reading, that’s not what I’m thinking about. If I invite a friend for coffee and conversation, I want to spend time in his presence, thinking aloud together. I don’t plot to extract information from him with exploitive efficiency. I want to look at the questions we’re considering carefully. I want to notice the language we use in our inquiries. I want us to pace ourselves, to take our time.

I treat my favorite authors as friends. In reading, I tend to dally and linger, rather than rush.

I buy, rather than borrow, books because I annotate them. If you pull a book off the shelf of my library, you’ll see notes in the margins.

Just as speed readers have their techniques, we slow readers have ours. Annotation is the gold standard.

I’m reading Ronald Blythe’s Next to Nature, and the margins are full of Greek lambdas, which I use to note an interesting choice of words. (Lambda is the first letter in logos.) We know what humdrum means, but Blythe implies there are such things as humdrums and lists them. He suggests that humdrums must be interspersed with delights, and he lists those too. A day filled with reading proof and digging up the garden must be balanced by listening to the music of Gerald Fenzi and by discussing Shakespeare with the cat.

I studied his list and then made my own.

It makes for slow reading — almost glacial reading. It’s also memorable reading.

• Sources: Ronald Blythe, Next to Nature: A Lifetime in the English Countryside; London: John Murray, 2022, p. 113.