Love reading but don’t have the time? Stop making excuses

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/29/love-reading-dont-have-time-stop-excuses

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The revelation that the French culture minister, Fleur Pellerin, had not read any of Nobel prizewinner Patrick Modiano’s novels, and in fact does not do much reading at all, has been met with dismay in France. It’s no surprise – one of the things the French take most pride in is their unashamed intellectualism. For a British girl who went to a school where reading books and using big words were habits I concealed for fear of ostracism, living there came as a shock. Their educational training in philosophy and the art of constructing a debate are a source of pride, not shame, to be showcased in bars and at the dinner table; so for the culture minister to admit she has no time to read for pleasure could be seen as a failure of patriotic duty. But then, how many of us in the west really have time to read any more?

A survey last year found that almost 4 million British adults never read books for pleasure, and as in Pellerin’s case, a lack of time was the dominant factor. In Britain, 4 million people (perhaps that same 4 million, it’s not inconceivable) are working more than 48 hours a week, with one in 25 men working more than 60 hours a week. Men generally read less than women, and our long hours culture is undoubtedly a factor. The man I live with is usually too exhausted to read more than a couple of pages in the evenings. Instead, like many people I have met, he stores up the things he wants to read, then binges during his time off. Yet if we Britons spend our holidays hungrily gobbling up our annual quota of words and ideas from a sun lounger, doesn’t it show that, despite worrying literacy figures, we do still want to read, and learn, and explore fictional worlds?

It’s a question of time, we say. Yet we make time for other things: binge-drinking, arguing on Twitter, the X-Factor. The internet in particular is frequently blamed for the death of the novel. It changes the way we read: we scan, trying to pick the diamonds from the detritus, flitting from one page to the next. Our attention spans are frazzled. Researchers say we are developing new, digital brains that are eclipsing the deep reading circuitry that has formed over millennia. This kind of reading feeds our imaginations and in them, we create people and places and experiences, in what Will Self described beautifully, as a kind of telepathy. It’s not that the internet is making us stupid, but that we’re losing what comes with that deep reading: immersion, relaxation, escapism.

I’ve always viewed reading as a form of self-improvement. As with travel, you discover new worlds and ideas, become richer, more knowledgeable, and hopefully more empathic; a better human. But if, as a society, we have abandoned this kind of self-improvement, what does it say about us? We live in a self-improvement culture, with many of us relying on meditation apps to gain some kind of “headspace”. Download this app and on your lunchbreak, instead of doing what you usually do – curling up in the staff room next to the radiator in the hope of a short nap – make a few clicks and you might reach nirvana.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the next big thing wasn’t a CBT app; smash and grab exercises available on your smartphone for those snatched moments during the course of the day, to help stem the tide of stress and anxiety that so many of us are feeling. We’re constantly plugged in. Instead of taking long walks, people stare down at their phone screens while hurrying between meetings. In this world of “life-hacks” it’s rare that you’ll see someone doing something at a leisurely pace, for the sheer enjoyment of it, whether it’s simply spending time chatting to friends; embarking on personal hobbies – for love, not Instagram; or even exercising. We’re now told fitness can be achieved with a four-minute workout.

In a way, it makes sense. So little of our culture is devoted to reading now that you could ask why anyone’s culture minister should be under pressure to indulge in it. It’s worse here than in France, where we’re depriving prisoners of reading material, and removing wonderful books such as Of Mice and Men and To Kill a Mockingbird from the curriculum, books that teach us vital things about humanity, about conflict and race and disability, books that, when I studied them at school, made me weep and rage and want to change the world.

Pellerin reflects the general trend across an increasingly philistine west, but it’s not the philistinism that I’m so much worried about. It’s the loss of that openness to new emotions. If you look at my Kindle library, half of the books are abandoned, unfinished. I want that rush of feeling but I’m no longer so willing to wait for it. Reading is delayed gratification, as you dawdle through the development for the payoff. And so few of us dawdle anymore. Instead of savouring, we gobble – not just words, but everything.