The main argument that I offer for "slowing down" and savoring a book is the different material and experience offered by a book or other literature. Movies and TV offer 30-minute to maybe 2-hour long story arcs that have to be wrapped up quickly and are usually heavy on the solving the problem or taking action and light on the reflection (the two parts of a story mentioned by Ira Glass).
Also, the moving screen is designed to catch a wide variety of people with as little story background as possible while literature has some series that have hundreds or thousands of pages of worthy and interesting background.
My main reason for loving literature and choosing to spend time reading books over movies is the availability of a wide variety and numerous books by my favorite authors. A book is relatively inexpensive to produce and the typical author averages one book every year or two. You can choose to follow one author and have many more hours of enjoyment than a movie that costs millions and is over in two hours. Also even if you like a particular director or movie star, you cannot predict the quality of the movie because there are so many factors involved. With a book, rarely does an author throw out a book that is a significant disapointment, if you enjoyed their other books.
One final reason for choosing to slow down and read books is that books (and other literature) can explore ideas in depth and in ways that other formats cannot.
Students should be exposed to these possibilities in a firm but supportive way before they are allowed to write literature off as "old fasioned".
"Concerned Citizen" is a good blog name for you, Shannon (oops, did I just blow your cover? ;-) Jefferson said that a well-educated populace is the what democracy needs to flourish. But it's easy to see that if "slow reading" -- really deep thoughtful reading and thinking -- are lost to the kind of skimming and scanning/superficial reading that we do on the Web that there's a big threat to democracy and beyond -- to our students' losing touch with the wisdom and culture they can only access through slow reading. I think you're right that slow reading can make us in charge of our own education, in school and beyond.
ReplyDeleteI'm hoping the work we do with YA lit can help convince teens that there's something to be said for slow reading.
Really appreciate your point about finding favorite authors to follow. That's one way to make slow reading more habitual and part of your life.
btw do you follow Neil Gaiman or other fave authors? You might enjoy that. Gaiman has a million and a half followers and is quite entertaining.