Slow reading: one piece in a good reader’s arsenal.

I sometimes read very slowly, and sometimes very quickly. It may be that attention spans are shrinking. I often have a difficult time getting my students to simply stop and think about what they’ve read. And so I’m all on board with the “slow reading” movement:

“The idea is not to read everything as slowly as possible, however. As with the slow food movement, the goal is a closer connection between readers and their information, said John Miedema, whose 2009 book Slow Reading explores the movement.

“‘It’s not just about students reading as slowly as possible,’ he said. ‘To me, slow reading is about bringing more of the person to bear on the book.’”

Even my 17 year old son makes fun of how slowly I read the many novels and history books I’m always trudging through, but, as I tell him, I tend to remember almost everything I read in those books. And as I research, I come across articles and books I move very slowly through, trying to make sense of every last word. It drives me particularly crazy when I ask my students what a new legal word means and none of them know. How can they read law — something they’re trying to learn — without a dictionary and without the effort to understand what it is they’re reading?

But sometimes I have to read quickly too. If you research a difficult legal question, you’ll often have to read, literally, hundreds of cases. You don’t engage in “slow reading” to find your way through hundreds of cases to the handful that merit serious study and will genuinely help answer the question you’re researching.

So, slow reading is good. So is fast reading, skimming. What makes a truly good reader is doing both and deploying them effectively.