What This Is All About
I read a lot. Or at least I used to. For about 15 years, I ploughed through hundreds of books at record speeds, at times more excited about the next one than the one I was holding. The result was not impressive. In fact, I gained very little. The more I read, the less I seemed to remember and like fog on a spring morning, every book finished would slowly lift from my consciousness. Few images lingered behind while most vanished, forever out of reach.
I decided to look deeper into this. I spoke with friends and family, and I read (of course), any relevant materials on the topic. It seemed that even though my symptoms were on the more severe side, many others were struggling with the same thing: an anxiety to read more, casting a shadow over their joy of experiencing any story, never allowing them to be content.
There’s a reason for it. Most of us, we read too much, too fast and we move on too soon. We rarely go deep into a story. We go in and out of it, distracted by technology, but more often, by ourselves. We take in only its first layer and allow it to wash over us like a TV show re-run. If there are parts we don’t understand or parts that are simply boring, we skip past them. We are satisfied with getting the gist of the idea. With so many books out there, it seems ridiculous to be spending weeks or months with only one.
There’s something insidious in how social pressure builds up and pulls us in this direction. Goodreads prompts you to set yearly reading targets. At work, we run reading challenges. At school, children are encouraged to read more and wider, with reading lists that stretch far longer than the summer vacation. In university, each lecturer asks for more pages to be read than one person could possibly digest in a week. Publishers assault us with the five books you ‘need’ to read this summer. Bill Gates has his favourites of the season. So does Obama. Libraries stack shelves of recommended reads. So do bookshops. Awards each year announce that at least one book ‘reinvents the English literature as we have known it’ or more conservatively, that the story is ‘magical’ and ‘the best ever written’. They are not always wrong, nor are they often right. The question is whether even attempting to read all of them is inherently good for you. It wasn’t for me, that I know.
And yet, it’s no wonder that we’re in this situation. In our days, competition drives every aspect of our being. We are always on the lookout for our edge. The constant mode of operation is self-improve, self-help and self-medicate. Reading has grown into an object of status and an instrument of social progression. Now, more than ever, it’s yet another thing we need to ‘work on’. Take for instance bogus Youtube videos telling us CEOs read one book a day and so should you. Truth is, few if any of them read more books than you and me. The few I’ve met working as a consultant were stuck in glass towers at 10pm, sweating under their collars, looking forward to the string of conference calls to end. They didn’t read a book every day. Nor did they wake up at 3 am for a long run. This is all self-help bullshit intended to make you feel inadequate and hollow, like the reason you don’t like yourself is because you don’t run at 3 am or read a book a day.
And if reading isn’t your thing, you might’ve experienced this hollowness with something else. Like movies or Netflix TV shows or Youtube or anything that we’ve come to describe as ‘content’ and which we can’t stop gorging on. Or, even more so, social media: Twitter, Insta, Facebook and the many others that have turned our attention into equity and to which we still loyally return to every day. We hunt with our clicks from screen to screen, craving for more, living with some deep-seated mirage that there’s an end to all of this. But there isn’t. The truth is, there is so much content out there that we can’t keep up. Like with the rest of information shelling us on a daily basis from various channels, it’s literally impossible for us to process all of it, to internalize it, memorize it and allow it to leave its imprint on us. To all of this, the answer is not more, but less. In fact, to make the most of what’s out there, we should limit our consumption to only as much as we can stomach with purpose and intention.
As Juval Noah Harari says, the true power of our age is no longer knowledge but clarity, the ability to find our way through the storm1. Few if any of us can manage to isolate themselves from being constantly bombarded with new information and focus intently on what we believe is important. It follows that most of us end up knowing many things superficially instead of knowing a few things really well. We’ve just grown a bit more numb to stimuli. We treat things a bit more superficially. With more as our credo and limited time resources, the only way out is to cram – reading fast, reading in short bursts, reading as a distraction to a distraction. We go from the book to the phone, back to the book, back to the phone. This also describes who we’ve become: stressed out, anxious, unable to maintain our focus, constantly flipping through channels, apps, tasks and at times, people.
Since we’re so distracted, stories rarely sediment. Cal Newport talks extensively in ‘Deep Work’ about the cognitive lag we all experience in task switching – it takes time for the mind to adapt to a new topic and serve you right. This applies to books as well. Reading several books in parallel or jumping fast from one to the other is unlikely to leave you with much. Deep down we must sense a frustration with that, so we pick up our phones once again. And the cycle continues.
At the end of the day, there’s only one question that matters - what is the purpose of reading? Some say it’s meant to increase empathy. Others claim it supports neural development. For some it’s relaxation, for others study. For me it’s all of these and something more. It’s almost magic, a feeling of transcendence, an internal tickle that I feel with nothing else. And I chase this feeling from book to book, waiting for the next time it hits me. My wife says this is how one would describe addiction. Maybe it is. A pleasant sort of addiction, one that gives me the illusion of choice. And if I reflect on it, the most intense highs I reached whenever I reached down so deep that I inhabited the same world as the characters. Not surprisingly, these are the books I read the slowest, pausing, thinking, wondering why what was happening was happening. After much reading, I’ve come to believe that reading is about connecting with the material, allowing it to change you, to leave an impression on you and that can only be done with patience, slow and deep.
How I got here
I probably took longer than most to reach this conclusion.
In high school I had grown fascinated with a writer that claimed he was reading upwards of one hundred books per year in his youth. He had devised a mechanical system for rotating notecards to accelerate his text processing ability. He skipped classes or read during them. He cut on his sleep. I did the same. Soon after I ran into a book that was teaching you where to place your eyes on a page to maximize the comprehension, while minimizing the time spent on it. There were other tips too – like, for instance, you had to be careful not to be mouthing the words while you were reading, not even in your mind. That could slow you down. If you applied all these tips, they claimed, you could finish any book in a couple of hours. That’s what I aspired to.
Soon enough, I was also reading one hundred books per year. Which was crazy. It literally meant a book every three days or so. The books came from different genres, different lengths, different levels of complexity. I would be reading Nietzsche, then a young adult novel, then Agatha Christie, then a commentary on the Koran. When reading, I would skip over parts of books that seemed boring. I even gave up on many books. I would focus on the ‘action’ or trying to figure out ‘what the author wanted to say’. That meant sometimes not understanding certain things and still marching on. I would take no notes aside from writing down in my journal the name of the author, the name of the book and the date of finishing the book. I ended up with a long list, the true purpose of which was to remember that I had read the book.
At the same time, I was also buying upwards of two hundred books per year. The piles would grow and grow and seemingly I was never able to get to the bottom of them. So I would read faster and faster. Quantity was important because it acted as a source of validation. If I was reading one hundred books per year, I couldn’t go wrong. It meant that I was smart and getting smarter. It meant that I was heading to do great things.
Years later, aside from a few good books that coerced me into slowing down and enjoying them, I remembered nothing. I’m not even exaggerating. There were books which I had read in high school and re-read years later and it was like I was reading them for the first time. I couldn’t even remember what the book was about. The only proof of having read it was that it was written down on my ‘list’. So this way, sadly, in my mid-20s I came to the conclusion that I had no clue how to read. For a long time, I felt like all that time had been lost and I could’ve done better just spending more time in the sun.
And yet, all these hundreds of books left one thing behind - the realization and acceptance that it doesn’t matter how much you read. It rather matters how deep and focused you read, how much you pause to masticate the words and think about how they relate to your world. That is how you’re going to get the most out of it. Of course, that might mean that you will not read one hundred books per year, but only 10 or 15. And that’s fine. You will remember those ten, whereas you will have forgotten all those hundred. If each of those hundred books would leave a smudge on your canvas, the few books you’ll spend a longer time with will be engraved in you forever. In short, reading wider was a big mistake. I should have been reading deeper.
What changed
Theoretically, deep reading sounds complicated. Here is a good, yet daunting definition I found online:
A deep approach to reading is an approach where the reader uses higher-order cognitive skills such as the ability to analyse, synthesize, solve problems, and thinks meta-cognitively in order to negotiate meanings with the author and to construct new meaning from the text. The deep reader focuses on the author's message, on the ideas she is trying to convey, the line of argument, and the structure of the argument. The reader makes connections to already known concepts and principles and uses this understanding for problem solving in new contexts.2
In fact, scrap that, this one I like better:
Unlike watching television or engaging in the other illusions of entertainment and pseudo-events, deep reading is not an escape, but a discovery. Deep reading provides a way of discovering how we are all connected to the world and to our own evolving stories. Reading deeply, we find our own plots and stories unfolding through the language and voice of others.3
Academic definitions aside, deep reading is a lot simpler to put in practice. Here’s what I did.
I took a few measures, which proved to be more and more valuable as time went by. First of all, I tried to get it out of my head that I’m aiming to read a certain number of books. I stopped actively communicating how many books I’m reading (yes, as a teenager I was bragging a lot). I stopped carrying piles of books with me when travelling and tried to restrict myself to one or two. I started reading books slowly and tracing with a pencil the parts I thought were insightful. I made small comments on the corner of the page. Some would be as insightful as ‘wow’ or ‘lol’ or ‘my wife should read this’, while others would be lengthier. If I got bored, or tired, I would put the book down. I would aim to only read one book at a time. And I would be more mindful of the books I committed to reading. Of course, I failed along the way.
But with time I developed a system. Once the book was over, I would take time to think and write about the book. I would start with what it meant for me and what I’m taking away. It could be one page or seven, depending on the book and how much I had enjoyed it. As I did that, I would flip through again page by page stopping on the rows I had underlined. That would spark more writing and contemplation.
The result was threefold. First, I now had in my head a digested perspective of what the book was about and what it meant for me. This in turn sparked new ideas about other dimensions of my life. Second, I had an active repository of notes that I could always go back to in order to refresh my memory of the book. Within minutes, I could reactivate the experience of having read that book. Third, and perhaps most importantly, I experienced a feeling of wholeness. Like I had reached deep enough. Like it was finally finally, enough.
What comes next
Only that there was one more step left to take. I was still jumping randomly from one book to the other, one genre to the other and one author to the other. This worked just fine in appreciating individual stories, but I wanted to learn more about the evolution of an author and the evolution of their craft. I wondered whether there was something to reading individual authors deeply and spending time reflecting on each of their books. Reflecting in the sense of not only of what the plot might stand for, or what the literary symbols could allude to, but also what that books must’ve meant for that author at that point in his or her life and what could it possibly mean for us. I love the idea of Nicholas Carr that ‘deep reading is deep thinking’4 and I wanted to think deeply about one author and see how far it would take me.
That is the purpose of this project. It’s an attempt to go deep into one author, the one that I’ve found most fascinating in recent years – Haruki Murakami. This entire page is about him and his work, viewed from the filter of another person. I am not planning to review Murakami’s books, but to digest them and meditate on some of their core themes and how they connect with today’s world. Big words. Let’s see how far we take it.
The reason I’m choosing Murakami is because I find both his style and his evolution as a writer fascinating. This exercise is aimed at helping me understand it better and learn from it. I won’t claim that Murakami is the greatest. In fact, some of his books left me cold or at best, confused. Others blew my mind. That’s beside the point. I choose him because I like him.
As of now, Murakami has written 14 novels and 5 short story collection. These are the core of what I will focus on, although I might also include some of his essays, non-fiction work and short stories.
For each post I will add a short synopsis of the novel at the end of the essay for convenience. Since the purpose, yet again, is not to review his work, then I’d rather not focus as much on the factual aspects of the story. I will also try not to release any spoilers, but I can’t promise that level of discipline.
If I have one non-selfish aspiration for this exercise is that it will generate debate and discussion. Your comments are more than welcome. They would be your experience of deep reading these essays. It will feel good to engage and maybe discover that there is a community of others who feel just like you.
Lastly, a word of warning – I have no competence to be writing this. I have no English Lit degree and I don’t enjoy reading literary criticism. I will not be referencing peer-reviewed journal articles (unless I stumble over them like in this essay) or use any theoretical frameworks. I’ll try to keep it simple. I’ll try to write it the way I would like to read it. In fact, I might be the only one that will.
That’s it. This is as niche as niche can get. But maybe, just maybe, somebody finds any of this helpful.
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Yuval Noah Harari, 2018, 21 Rules For the 21st Century
Robert P. Waxler and Maureen P. Hall, 2011, Transforming Literacy: Changing Lives Through Reading and Writing
Nicholas Carr, 2010, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains.
Hey Cristi! Love the idea and appreciate you writing it down and sharing it!
Your story triggered a lot of memories from my own childhood: the freedom I felt in my first ever long lecture (Robinson Crusoe), my first all-nighter (way before my consulting days, reading western novels), the book that taught me English (Harry Potter). But also the school lecture lists that I actually enjoyed because I could feel how they would expand my mind, despite kind of hating that I had to do write an essay for each of them.
Then stopping reading regularly, because I had become "busy" and then picking it up again for such a different reason: that I had a hard time for years falling asleep.
Reading your experience with targets and the desire to read more and more, I realize I never had that. But I was reading equally random and from many books, there was little left after the initial reaction. I was never able to form the habit to write down my thoughts, notes or feelings.
Reading is one of the very few things I still do purely out of pleasure. No agenda, no rush, it's just for me. Maybe that is why I'm hesitant to become more "structured" about it. I feel like that would destroy part of the magic. At the same time, I would love to stay more with a book and it's insights to stay more with me after I finish it. I am not sure how to blend the two - but this makes me even more curious about your planned journey.
Can't wait for the next post!
Hey Cris,
Woow! Like Ariadna, I (fortunately!?) never experienced something of those things you wrote about. But I also never tried those fast reading techniques - which I actually only ever heard about with respect to reading scientific literature - on books I like to read in private. It sounds familiar what you wrote about social media though.
I also know the thrill that results from really merging in a books story and connecting with the characters brought alive by opening a books first page and fading away by finishing its last one. For this reason I really wish that by changing your expectation you find your satisfaction in reading again.
I hope you do not mind me if I also raise a slight concern: It seems to me a bit as if you substituted one ambition on your reading with yet another one of the opposite extreme. But what about reading for the readings sake - without any higher mission? Or like Ariadna also mentioned: Reading for simple pleasure?
Anyway, I am happy for you that you finally found your personal way of reading. Lucky you!
After reading what you "told" about your new project I am curious about your future sharings. Knowing you I bet it will be enlightning as well as surprising.
Hope to read and see you soon.
Robert