Read at Whim<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I don't know about you, but I can create a stack of books to read and then a new book arrives in the mailbox and I decide to read the new book. On the day\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2011\/06\/28\/read-at-whim\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Read at Whim\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I don't know about you, but I can create a stack of books to read and then a new book arrives in the mailbox and I decide to read the new book. 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{"id":17837,"date":"2011-06-28T00:09:38","date_gmt":"2011-06-28T05:09:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/community\/jesuscreed\/?p=17837"},"modified":"2011-06-26T15:16:46","modified_gmt":"2011-06-26T20:16:46","slug":"read-at-whim","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2011\/06\/28\/read-at-whim\/","title":{"rendered":"Read at Whim"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

I don\u2019t know about you, but I can create a stack of books to read and then a new book arrives in the mailbox and I decide to read the new book. On the day before we left for Israel Alan Jacobs\u2019 new book, The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction<\/a><\/em><\/strong>, arrived, and I said to myself, \u201cThat\u2019s a book to read on the flight.\u201d And I did. Which decision illustrates the whole point of Jacobs\u2019 new book: read at whim.<\/p>\n

$\"\"$ <\/a>Why \u201cwhim\u201d? Lower case \u201cwhim\u201d in Jacobs\u2019 dictionary means \u201cthoughtless, directionless\u201d but upper case Whim means this: \u201cRead what gives you delight \u2014 at least most of the time \u2014 and do so without shame\u201d (23). One of my favorite writers, who often writes about reading, calls this \u201cdesultory\u201d reading \u2014 a kind of wandering and meandering from one book to another. More or less, that\u2019s how I have been reading for years. What strikes me today as a \u201cmust-read\u201d becomes sometimes a \u201cread later\u201d and sometimes to a \u201cI\u2019m not even interested now.\u201d Whim is a good word for it, and it\u2019s a good habit to establish.<\/p>\n

So, what are your reading habits? Do you read this way? Or do you have a list, work down it, and when done go to the next one on the list without regard to something new that strikes your fancy? Do you believe in reading lists? A canon of books to make one intelligent, or informed, or literate?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Jacobs\u2019 book has no chapters, or at least as commonly made clear in books. He meanders through themes, they build into one another, but there\u2019s no real argument and there\u2019s no real plot \u2014 this is an essayist\u2019s approach to an essay on reading in an age where it is far too easy to get distracted.<\/p>\n

Our problem, of course, is the internet and social media. They are all consuming, or can be, and they can create habits of the mind \u2014 quick, insatiable, and \u201cwhim-y\u201d kinds of habits that prevent us from focused reading. Sherry Turkle sees this as an addiction of the habits in the mind. I agree \u2014 it is too easy to sit down, begin reading a good book, see something that can be checked on Wikipedia or hear the ding of the e-mail or wonder who\u2019s commenting on the blog or what Facebook might offer or Twitter (how many were distracted to checking one?) and then not really find the focused attention required for a good book. Plutarch once observed that Rusticus showed composure in waiting until his lecture was over before he opened a package. That lecture was on curiosity. That\u2019s the sort of problem this book addresses, and it addresses it well (though I do wonder if this book might better have been a longish essay in Books & Culture but since I like his prose and wit and quotations, I\u2019ll take it in longer form). [By the way, the letter to Rusticus was from the emperor. I swipe this story from Montaigne, and I can\u2019t recall that Jacobs quoted that great French essayist in this book.]<\/p>\n

Anyway, here are some themes in the book: Whim, aspirations, upstream, responsiveness, kindling, true confessions (how Kindle refreshed Jacobs\u2019 ability to read well again), lost (rapt), plastic attention, quiet please, serendip \u2026<\/p>\n

I\u2019m a fan of essays and essayists, which means I\u2019m a fan of Jacobs. One point he made I love: education kind of reading is not what we need to cultivate (and it\u2019s one reason why many professors don\u2019t write \u2014 it was a schooling kind of reading and writing that was mastered); what we need to cultivate is reading for pleasure, for the rapture it creates.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a special kind of silence created by focused reading, and one can almost hear that kind of silence. How about you?<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"