The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction by Alan Jacobs
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
An entirely delightful read.
As a lover of reading and books in general, one always imagines the endeavour to simply mean consuming books on a vast range of topics such as Religion, nature, philosophy, politics and more.
By virtue of simply completing those books, it can be assumed that we think we know all there is to know about reading itself. After all, aren’t we readers primarily? Does not the line of work prove the expertise of the worker? But it is books like this one which serve as a humbling mechanism to remind us that deep, meaningful knowledge about everything exists, even about things we think need no further explanation. Words, terms and analogies give colour to ideas we had only assumed we understood and we discover how ignorant we were of the topic in the first place.
I must admit, I never knew reading about … reading could put me into a state of awe, but that is what happened with this book. Alan Jacobs touched on topics and insights that not only had I never considered before, but which made perfect sense. It was as though I knew exactly what he was talking about the second my mind’s eye scanned his words.
Why do people read at all? What provides the fertile soil for a love of reading to develop and what is it exactly that deep readers, lost in thought and mesmerised in their endeavour, truly achieve? Among others, these were questions asked and answered in the book and Alan Jacobs does very well in convincing us of his ideas.
Some of the things I found to be quite insightful included the fact that reading is one of the most unnatural endeavours that we engage in. Picking up a book, scanning the words on the page, absorbing their contents and ruminating on their meaning is not something that comes naturally without deliberate intent. When children form groups and play together (with a similar result seen across human civilisations), language is first to develop and there is no assumed notion that writing (the prerequisite to reading) is inevitable. To see reading in this manner points out just how strange an activity it is, one that requires intent both from the writer and those who read his works.
Another idea worth pondering over is how the act of being engrossed in reading can help build the habit of attentiveness and the cultivation of silence. Jacobs writes about how a child sitting next to an adult reading them a book watches vividly in an engrossed manner as ideas, imagination and value are extracted from stationary pieces of printed text, as an aura of silence is created, blocking out everything else in the world that may exist for as long as the book has words yet to be read. Children’s books with vivid pictures accompanying the text also teach children that information can be gained simultaneously, yet separately via the ears and the eyes. The combination of these subtle nuances when reading to a child did much to make me appreciate just how much goes on, how much is communicated, when we do the most simplest of tasks.
I have a young son who loves to have books read to him, and Jacobs talking about this gave the experience much more meaning as I studied my son as he was read to. I could see the almost hypnotic level of focus and engrossment my son experienced as I read him words that he could not fully understand. I saw him draw the figurative veil of silence over himself and block out the world as the pages of his book were turned one by one. It wasn’t hard for me to realise therefore, that what Jacobs was talking about was true. In the world we live in today full of noise and distractions, cultivating the traits of attentiveness and creating a silo of silence around oneself so that they can engross themselves in their activity will, I hope render one immune from much of the anxiety induced by modern life.
I finished the book with a wide array of other books mentioned by Jacobs on similar topics, one that he drew inspiration from and others who, he quoted. Jacobs himself writes in the book that if we enjoy the works of an individual, it is inefficient to merely look for similar works by other authors. Rather what is better is that we read and experience the works of those whom the Author himself was inspired by. We are too quick to look for parallel works, but we should instead be casting our net upstream to engage with the sources of inspiration. Following this advice, I have noted many of the books he mentioned and will eagerly be adding them to my ever lengthening reading list.
I wholeheartedly recommend this book (best digested and enjoyed slowly) to anyone who wishes to open his mind to the art of reading itself. I have no doubt that this work will help appreciate the act of reading and bring to light the near miraculous effects it can have on an individual.