The great reading debate continues

I'm spending some time in a cafe, drinking tea. There's a little girl waiting for her parents to fetch her her juice and bagel. While she waits, she's reading the paper. Or maybe just looking at the pictures and ads. Whatever she's doing, she's doing it with total concentration, poring over the page gripped in both hands. According to the New York Times, this child's act may be revolutionary precisely because she's reading a printed page.

It's interesting to see this issue of internet reading come up again. The Times just published the first article in a series on digital versus print reading. It's quite lengthy at four online "pages." And just in case you weren't aware of the high stakes here, the series title gives you a clue: "The Future of Reading." Currently, it's the second most emailed story on the Times site. The article offers some sobering statistics from a report issued by the National Endowment of the Arts, using Department of Education data. The findings cited by the Times article include:

just over a fifth of 17-year-olds said they read almost every day for fun in 2004, down from nearly a third in 1984.

Nineteen percent of 17-year-olds said they never or hardly ever read for fun in 2004, up from 9 percent in 1984. (It was unclear whether they thought of what they did on the Internet as “reading.”)

The Times author, Motoko Rich, at least points out that we read for a variety of reasons (although calling reading a mortgage contract the sort of minimal, informational level of reading is a bit of stretch). Where people seem most passionate about the issue is the idea of reading for learning, enrichment, or pleasure. Rich quotes David McCullough: "Learning is not to be found on a printout [. . .] It’s not on call at the touch of the finger. Learning is acquired mainly from books, and most readily from great books.”

Take that, Perez Hilton readers! But a sticky question,which I think we ultimately will shy away from answering, at the heart of this debate is: can online reading make us better people, in the same way, that reading a "great book" can?

Whether or not the internet can make us "better" (read better educated, more literate, more sophiticated) is a question that's thornt to answer. This is why the dichotomy of online reading for information versus print reading for pleasure is preferable to contemplate. But this dichotomy is a problem if we don't confront its underlying assumptions. Take Ann Althouse's response to Rich's article. The title of Althouse's response is "Does reading on the internet count as reading." Althouse's answer is yes. But at the end of her article, she reaffirms this central dichotomy:

I definitely think that reading on-line restructures your brain. That may be bad in some ways, but it's got to be good in others. In any case, it's where I am now. I still read books, but I read them differently, for example, I cut to the essence quickly and spring into alert when I detect bullshit. I'm offended by padding, pedantry, and humorlessness. This may cut off some paths to enlightenment for me, but it also saves me a lot of time, and I find some other path.

Althouse's assertion is dependent on the assumption that we're all reading for information, for research, for argument. It might work for a book with an argument that's established over the course of several chapters. But how does this style of reading work with a novel, a memoir, a biography?

The Times article also focuses on the internet's research potential, citing the internet's potential to help students with disabilities, such as dyslexia, read. Once again, the example cited was how the internet helped one such student do research. Well, the internet has made research easier--if you've developed the skills, of course. Understanding how a web page is organized, where the information you want is located (is it in "about us?" for example), what websites among the millions turned up by a Google search are going to be the most helpful takes time and practice. I don't think they're developed just because someone does a lot of online reading. This is true for print research as well. As an undergraduate and master's student, when I photocopied an article from a journal, I never bothered to photocopy the notes. Why should I? It was the article I was interested in. It took writing a master's thesis before I understood that the article was only one part of a larger picture, and that I might want to look at those other things quoted and cited by the author whose article I was reading.

Until we accept that reading, whether done for research or pleasure, in print or online, is part of a complex way in which we take in and evaluate information, entertain ourselves, create and pass on our stories and our histories, this debate isn't going to go very far.

Summer Reading: Airports

This post came about for two reasons: I went to Sacramento, and I read Sarah Vowell. I didn't do those things at the same time. I read Vowell's The Partly Cloudy Patriot a few years ago, and something she said about airport reading stuck in my head: "My airport reading material--a novelization of Gettysburg here, a Lyndon Johnson biography there--always receives an approving glance from whatever middle-aged man on my flight is perusing the new Stephen Ambrose book, because every domestic flight requires a middle-aged man with a Stephen Ambrose book in his carry-on luggage--it's an FAA regulation." The lesson I took from this comment? Not to read more Stephen Ambrose but that people notice what you read. Lest you think this is a paranoic tendency, Wired magazine published this article which says that what you read is one of the things airline screeners notice last year.

I had this notion, a sort of "you are what you read" aphorism, in mind when I packed for my trip. I was connecting through the San Francisco airport where I knew I could find a good bookstore, Compass Books. I planned on buying a book in SFO. But I needed to have something else to read in the airport and on the plane before SFO. I tried to be reasonable. Usually, I weigh down my carry-on with 2-3 books because, let's face it, these days, I might be stranded in the airport for decades. However, my flights were short and my trip was relatively short and busy. One good book, purchased in San Francisco, would suffice.

In my local airport's small shop, I was faced with a wide selection of glossy magazines and a few shelves of mostly romance/thriller paperbacks. I bought a magazine (No, not US, the Atlantic). So far so good, but what about a book? The hardbacks looked interesting, but they were hardback, and I was trying to avoid buying anything weighty until Compass Books in San Francisco. Based on that criteria, I wound up purchasing Tina Brown's Diana Chronicles.


I have to admit that I spent the rest of my journey holding the poor book open as wide as possible, so as to obscure the spine and cover. I have no idea what Homeland Security and middle-aged Ambrose readers think of me. But I have to admit, Tina Brown is a good writer: she knows her subject, and she has a wicked, pointed turn of phrase at times that cuts through all of the clutter surrounding her subject. I also have to admit that I didn't buy a hardback after all. With my layover cut short, I grabbed Elizabeth Hind's Generation Loss in paperback. You can read Bookslut's review, which is an excellent summary of the novel's achievments and flaws, here.

Happy Reading!

Summer Reading Series

Summer's the best time for reading right? Unless you have to mow the lawn, weed, and spray the roses like we do at the Domicile of Rabid Readers (bonus points if you can name the Latin noun which is the root for "domicile" AND the declension) all the while ignoring the dreaded dust bunny buildup. Still, we get our summer reading in at the DRR, even if it means a tad bit of sleep deprivation. I'm sure you, faithful readers, do the same.

The next few posts will meditate on what we read during the summer and how we do that. Do people read different books on the beach than on the airplane? Look for a review or two of what I've been reading lately. I'd welcome your ideas of what you'd like to see discussed, so please post comments below.

Tolle lege ("Pick up and read") from St. Augustine's Confessions

The art of reading

Nicholas Carr thinks we might be in trouble. In an article published in the latest issue of the The Atlantic, provocatively titled "Is Google Making Us Stupid?", Carr describes how his decade-plus of internet use has changed the way he reads and thinks. He laments the fact that he no longer has the attention span to read lengthy articles and books. He blames this loss on using the internet for a certain kind of reading: skimming. Carr suggests that although we're might be reading more than we did in the 1970's or 1980's, the kind of reading we're doing is skimming. Ultimately, Carr shares his fears that this trend has negative consequences for us culturally, making us, intellectually, less complex.

Carr's article is not the only one on this subject to appear recently. Michael Agger wrote about the skimming phenomenon in June. In "How We Read Online," Agger sums up the research about online skimming. According to Jakob Nielsen, whom Agger quotes several times, our online reading habits aren't pretty: "[U]sers are selfish, lazy, and ruthless." Agger's key distinction in the piece is between reading for information and reading for pleasure. Pleasure readers can still read online, although it's not the best environment. And screens will never replace paper. In fact, paper is a new salve for the travails of the glowing screen: "Rather, paper seems to be the new Prozac. A balm for the distracted mind."

Complaining about or observing the differences between reading online and reading say, a book, isn't a new phenomenon. James W. Earl, a professor of English at the University of Oregon, wrote about the problems of online reading in an article that appeared in the April 14, 2000 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education ("Reading for Sheer Pleasure--Remember That?"). Earl's issue with technology wasn't so much how it changed reading as much as the act of being online took people away from reading: "there's an information highway running right through the green campus, with an on-ramp on every desk where people used to sit and read." Earl's distinction is between that idea of going online and reading, a distinction that is much less meaningful today when so many things are available to read online. How things have changed since Earl's article in 2000 was brought home to me yesterday when I met with someone who holds a master's degree in French Literature. He had a print copy of the New York Times. "I always read it in print," he responded when I confessed to reading the online version. Looking at his print copy, with its rows of columns and small print, was, I admit, intimidating. Perhaps I've become a lazy reader using the Times' website. Looking at the "Most Emailed" list is always a quick way to navigate through the site. Yet, on the weekends, one of my favorite things to do is to read the local newspaper thoroughly at breakfast. And I don't have any fancy navigational aids then, unless you count the brief index that's smooshed on the bottom of the first page. Like perhaps many people, I find myself reading in both worlds: in print and online.

The arguments of Carr, Agger, and Earl are all based on assumptions about how we read in different situations. For Carr, online skimming destroys one's ability to read attentively and in-depth. Agger admits the necessity for skimming online; yet his assumption is that pleasure reading will be a panacea to the skimming necessary when we read online. Earl's assumption, made in 2000, is that online activities are antithetical to the reading process. The debate about online versus print reading, skimming versus reading in depth, is something of a false dichotomy. We have a variety of reasons to read and ways to read both in print and online. I may read an Op-Ed piece online in the New York Times and then book a flight; chances are, I'm probably not doing those things simultaneously if I'm interested in what I'm reading. But a variety of other circumstances influence if I multitask when reading or step away. The piece may not be well-written. It might be well-written, but I may have read enough to understand the argument without reading all the way through. This isn't limited to the online world of text. I've had this problem with Jared Diamond's books. I've read most of both Guns, Germs, and Steel and Collapse. Diamond's thesis and insights are so clear that by the time I'm three-quarters of the way through, I feel that I've grasped his arguments and insights completely. (Sorry, Jared)

There's also the time/place issue. A colleague asked if I'd read a lengthy online article. I had. "I started to," she said. Then she shrugged, "But I was at work, so. . ." We all know that work is one of the primary reasons we don't get to read enough. My husband has a rule: no novels at breakfast. The reason? They're potentially too absorbing to put down for him to leave in time for work. The same can be true for online materials. My husband, the no-novels-at-breakfast-guy can also spend hours reading various blogs.

Also, we shouldn't necessarily lump reading for pleasure and reading to be informed or to understand an argument together. I don't necessarily feel the same thrill reading Thomas Freidman as I do a good novel. However, we shouldn't push too hard on the distinction either, as Agger does. Reading a novel in print is not necessarily the antidote for our online overindulgences. For both reading for pleasure and reading for information some of the same issues which can distract us or limit our reading to a quick skim which I discussed above apply. Let's face it: reading takes time, patience, and a willingness to engage with the printed word be it online or on the page. Some people just don't like to read, as the plethora of summer book reading programs in public libraries with slogans like "Catch the Reading Bug" (Eugene OR Public Library), attest. Sometimes we just don't have a lot of time or inclination to read. How many times have you put a book down because you "just couldn't get into it" or didn't have the time to read it as carefully as you would like? The internet perhaps facilitates this notion of not finishing what we start by making it so easy to leave our materials behind. There's no pile of books or magazines on our nightstands to make us feel guilty. I'm not convinced internet skimming is shrinking our attention spans or radically changing how we read. Texting is doing that, but that's a subject for another blog post.


So welcome, fair readers, to the launch of this blog. As this post's title suggests, this blog will be a meditation on reading of all sorts. Expect to see some book reviews and also some essay-like thoughts. I've spent the past nine years training to be a professional reader (read: scholar) and reading has been a lifelong love. Although my career has taken a different direction, I look forward to sharing ideas with other readers. You might see some scholarly tendencies, but nothing like this, I promise.

Thanks for reading. Did you skim, or read? Let me know!