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Hey, I'm Andrew Limbong in from Mario Saguera.
In my usual gig at MPR, I host the Book of the Day podcast, and I report for our culture
desk, mostly covering books and publishing.
So, I do a lot of reading, which might sound like a dream to a lot of you.
But let me let you in on a deep dark secret.
I find reading extremely difficult.
Ever since I was a kid, through college as a literature major, and especially now, when
every book I read is competing with my phone for my attention, it's always a fight to achieve
that level of locked in deep reading.
Turns out, I was born this way, and so were you.
We were never born to read, and that means that human beings don't have a, if you will,
a place. They don't have a genetic program for reading the way we do for language and vision
and even affect.
Everything has these genetic programs.
It's just not the way reading is because it's an invention.
It doesn't exist in our brain.
Rather, we have to learn it, and that means our brain has to make a new circuit.
This is Mary and Wolf.
I'm the director of the Center for Dislexia, Diverse Learners and Social Justice at E-C-L-A.
I'm the author of Reader Come Home, the Reading Brain in a digital world.
She's also the author of the book, Proust and the Squid, the story and science of the reading
brain. So the perfect person to ask about deep reading.
I'm interested in tackling this idea of deep reading and how hard it is to do.
It's hard for me to do personally. I'm curious, what does deep reading actually look like or feel like?
I was reading your book and you excerpt a passage from Marcel Proust's book on reading.
It's towards the beginning. I'm curious, if you're reading deeply, what's happening in your body and your brain?
Well, Andrew, you set me up for my response beautifully by referring to Marcel Proust because what he said in a tiny little book called on reading, which Andrew, by the way, no one reads.
It's terrible, Paul, it's terrible. So at least I can quote him.
He said it's that fertile miracle of communication that occurs in solitude.
And at the heart of it is the point where we, the reader, go beyond the wisdom of the author to discover our own.
Deep reading is when we enter that space. I call it home. I call it sanctuary.
Kiss Jen, my dear novelist friend calls it the space of interiority.
It is that place where only we can go to think at our deepest, best, even most disciplined level about our insights and our associations, our reflections.
And I want no one to think, oh my gosh, I never do that. We all do it to a certain extent sometimes.
And I think you're even asking me for this interview is because people feel it's slipping away or they have lost it.
I can't even remember what it feels like to be so immersed that they forget where they are.
If that sounds like you, stick around after the break. This episode, how to read deeply.
Marianne Wolf helps us understand how deep reading works, how we can tap into those skills, and why we don't need to dedicate hours and hours to get the benefits. That's ahead.
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Okay, so according to Mary and Wolf, we weren't necessarily built for deep reading. That was our first takeaway.
In her books, Wolf details all the steps our brains need to take in order to enter a state of deep reading. It's a lot. And that's under ideal conditions with nothing getting in our way.
What stops us from getting to that moment? Because I got to say so I was reading your book, Read or Come Home yesterday.
And I think I was deep reading. I was trying to deep read. And then you start talking towards the back half about stuff about childhood development.
And then I started thinking about my child and like how we do screen time. And then I started thinking about like, oh, what am I doing?
And then I started thinking about, oh wait, I got to feed this kid dinner. And then I started thinking about, oh wait, when I'm going to finish this book, if I got to make dinner, what's our cheerio situation?
What's the deal that it is? And then all of a sudden, I'm like, I was like, wow, where am I? I forgot. That was deep reading.
Of course. And so what stops us from getting to that like contemplative moment that you describe so beautifully?
We've never done this before, but you are just setting up everyone in my response.
And that is what disrupts our distractions. And part of the distractions that I worry most about are not the kind that you said the hunt for the cheerio box.
Rather, the distractions that are intrinsically built in to our laptops and our phones in which we really have our attention pulled away.
The screen itself is a source of attention disruption. And by that, I mean, we have so much information that we have a built in defense mechanism. We skim.
And when we skim, we have two very common patterns. One is an F. We sample the top. We sample the middle. We go to the bottom of the screen. Or, and this is my particular pattern.
We do the top. And then we diagonally zigzag down. We're words fighting. We're browsing. And then we get to the bottom. And then we read the conclusion and feel virtuous.
The reality is that skimming is one of the greatest disruptions of deep reading, both skimming because it's a defense mechanism because we have to get all this information just like you did with my book.
And then there's the, I would say the environmental world that we live in is so full of distractions. So we are a wash in distraction in our worlds.
So when it comes to cultivating a space to read it deeply, what do you suggest?
So the first change that I would suggest in our habits is going to be a difficult one. If you are not forced to be on the screen, then the real agency you have is to ask the question, what is the purpose of this reading?
If the purpose is to experience the beauty of an author, if you are doing it on the screen, I assure you, even with your most disciplined habits, you're going to miss. You're going to scam no matter what because that's what we do or so accustomed to skimming.
So if the purpose is beauty, forget the screen. If the purpose is a contract or something legal that you really need to ponder and pour over or in my case, often reviewing an article, if I've decided I have to do this article as a review that's careful, I print it out.
Because print does not hasten us. Print goes according to our own pace. For my email, I assure you, Andrew, I never deep read. And therefore I skip a lot of things and make mistakes even.
But I do not deep read many things that all I need is the gist. And when you only need the gist, you can just use whatever medium you want.
But if you want to really go back to your reading habits before the screen, before you became almost a skim reader, then I ask you to really think hard about your choices.
Take away too is screens are fine if you're skimming, but if you want a deep read, you have a better chance of minimizing distractions if you read on paper. Like she says, prints allows us to go at our own pace.
But if you pick up a paper book and you're still having a hard time to really get your way inside of it, don't worry, it's happened to the best of us.
I was becoming like absolutely everybody else. And I was reading even a book that had once been precious to me. It meant so much to me. And when I went back to it, I couldn't read it.
You're talking here about a Herman Hess's book, right?
You are such a good reader. Andrew, yes. Yes, it's Herman Hess's book. And I once loved it, Magistro Ludi Glass-Beat Game. And he even won a Nobel Prize and for literature based on it and his other works.
And I couldn't read it. It was just painful. And what I had to do is what I'm going to tell your listener for two weeks, I forced myself to read 20 minutes a day, only 20 minutes.
As if I was just going to force myself to try to be that older version of a reader. And then it was like coming home to my old self, my old reading self.
Each of us, if we're serious, can ferret 20 minutes of our day away and try to read at the pace of the book and different books demand different paces. And some books can be read quite, you know, quickly.
I'm going to scandalize some of your listeners who must probably like I do love sit-hard to, but the fact is sit-hard to can be read a lot faster than narcissism, goldman or Glass-Beat Game or poetry.
So I ask your reader to, if they really are serious, you can discipline yourself and return to yourself.
Yeah, sit-hard is the only one I've been able to get there to be honest. See what I mean? It's such a good one. It's so good.
And remember the river scene, you know, and even if it's a faster read, it gives us an opportunity in spots to just enter the river of our own interiority.
All right, Digway 3 is the hard but obvious truth. One, deep reading takes discipline. It takes practice. It takes finding just a pocket of time and day to devote to it.
If we think about you reading this, Herman has a book like a rocky training montage, right? You're just sort of like, you know, building that muscle back up again. What did you learn about yourself as a reader during that process?
Oh, that's an interesting question. I was very stubborn. My mind was almost protesting stubbornly. I don't want to read this.
I was in for listeners. In your book, there's a funny moment where you're like, maybe this book is just bad.
Exactly. You are so right. I mean, that was a piece of it. I was stubbornly rejecting the book and thinking, you know, I hate to say it on NPR, but I said, why the...
Who in the world gave him a Nobel Prize for this? You know? I mean, that's how bad I was. And I think this is a good question that you're asking me because I, who had once loved this and appreciated it, was quite capable of rejecting it now because of my new skimming reading mode.
My brain didn't want to give that kind of time to every word, to the sentences, to the build up, to the evaluation, to the monitoring of my comprehension. I didn't want to do this because you have built up a desire that's almost affectively saying, hurry up, get through this, get to the bottom of the page or the bottom of the screen.
So, I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question.
Sometimes the negative feelings that a character elicits in you, there's a true set of feelings that we have when we try to discipline ourselves that have to be, and I will use the word fought against, fought against, try hard to realize that you are fighting against your own habit here.
And that it's almost like when you, when you learn any discipline and it's interesting that you said the rocky you are mode you are absolutely having to practice muscles that have atrophied.
So, your exercise metaphor is apt for learning how to read again at a deep level. You're practicing.
And even if you're only practicing for 15 to 20 minutes a day, that's fine because takeaway for is to not be so concerned about how many books you're reading.
At the end of every year, I always get a little self-conscious. I'm not the fastest reader, especially, you know, and I'll see like booktuck influences be like, I read 500 million books today.
Oh, I need that.
Whereas, like, my number, you know, I won't say, who, you know, that's between me and my Google Doc. But what is a good deep reader's relationship to the rate of reading?
The reality is that it differs with all of us. There's an individual rate, which is our comfort level. And there's a second rate, which is what are the demands, the particulars of the book or reading.
And I will say, you, you, and you can see the beautiful painting behind me. But, you know, your listeners can't, well, that is a painting by my son, Ben Wolf-Norm, who is dyslexic.
And he can read, but at a pace that he has to determine, and it's slower, but many people read more slowly. But I will never forget him deciding, because he knew I loved this book, to read Brother's Caram Lots Off, one summer.
It took him the entire summer, but it was his pace. And of course, the book demanded slower pace, too. But it was his pace. And I have no doubt that he was reading deeply his pace.
And so, each of us have, if you will, our own pace, and then if it was a formula, I would say, reader pace x by book pace, what it demands. And there are those like sit-harta that we can read faster.
And yet, then we will have spots just like the scene, or the, you know, where he's on the raft across the river with the raft watchman, where we just stop.
So, I tell everyone, let the book determine your pace, as well as enjoy your own.
What about retention and memory, though? I think a lot of people will have gone through the experiments of reading something and not remembering anything. I'll be honest with you. Every reference, every specific reference to sit-harta that you've made, I have no idea what you're talking about.
I read the books 10 years ago. I do not remember a thing about it. And so, what does the science say about how to retain the things that you have read?
It's interesting because the more activation that you have, including affective activation, the more likely it will be somewhere in your consolidated memory.
So, I would ask you, what is your feeling, Andrew, when you try to remember a sit-harta? What is your feeling?
It was a panic. I think I was a sophomore in college. It was one of those...
I wonder what I expected.
I was hoping for... you know, calm. No, no, it was definitely... I will come to... I was definitely skimming. I was not deeply to get. It was... I'm averaging a B- in this class. I got to get the screen up.
That is so good. Andrew, I would say on your list of things to do, in your book bucket list, return. Return to sit-harta. You're going to read it faster, but you will have a much easier time remembering what it includes.
Now, I'm going to say something that sounds a little outrageous, and that is, just because you can't retrieve the memory of something doesn't mean that there aren't aspects of it that are there.
There is more memory that consolidates than we have immediate perceptible access to. On the other hand, when we skim, we consolidate less, because we are using less affect, less evaluation.
I will add this less motor, which sounds ridiculous, but the reality is especially when you're reading something like science or something that you need, you take notes. And that maturic activity actually adds to your ability ultimately to remember.
You can forget your notes, and you go back and you see those notes. But even reading the notes about what you read activates what you actually did remember and have stored.
So there's both, there is more storage than you think, and there's less if you're skimming. And that's takeaway 5. If you want to remember something you read, quote or an idea, or even a feeling about a scene or character, write it down.
Do you recommend keeping a sort of like reading log or reading journal, or you compile all your notes and stuff?
You know what I recommend, and this is something, especially that's a little difficult if you're using your Kindle, though there are those aspects, you know, those types where you can.
I actually think the maturic aspect of taking notes helps you. And so I, I almost, there's nothing that's truly important to me that I haven't bought as a book or printed out as an article.
And then those notes are twofold. I write on the margin, and then I write in the back of the book the pages of the most important insights for me.
The back cover of my books has pages with words that say, insight into love, let's say, or digital, or whatever it is. And then when I return, I know automatically where I really need to go.
So to wrap up, what's the beauty of deep reading without it? What do we lose?
We lose two best thoughts, the authors and our own. And you see the real beauty is that we discover ourselves.
Deep reading at its ultimate is a place of discovery of other, a discovery of beauty, and a discovery and even appreciation for our ability to think outside the bounds of our everyday lives.
That was Marianne Wolf, author of the book Reader Come Home, The Reading Brain in a Digital World.
Okay, recap time. Take away one. If you're having a hard time deep reading, understand that our brains aren't meant to deep read.
As Marianne puts it on her first book, reading reflects the brain's capacity for going beyond the original design of its structures.
We're breaking new ground here, people. It's supposed to be hard. Take away two. Reduce distractions. Yes, that includes the phone you're probably listening to this on, chuck it in a drawer, and give an old fashioned paper book a shot.
Take away three. Deep reading is a discipline. If you want it, you're going to have to make time for it. It doesn't have to be too much time in life happens, but make deep reading something you can practice regularly.
Take away four. Read at your own pace. And the book's pace. Sometimes deep reading means you're not crushing dozens of books a month or whatever.
Take the time to really engage with what the author is saying, and what helps with that is take away five. Writing it down. Whether it's in the margins or your own notebook.
Write down the thoughts you're having as you read, and your own motor skills will help you think about and engage with what you're reading.
And that's it. A big thanks to my guest, Marianne Wolf. I will let you know if I ever do give Sitar the another shot.
For more on LifeKit, check out our other episodes. I hosted one on How to Enjoy Poetry and another on How to Brue a Great Couple Coffee.
You can find that at npr.org slash LifeKit. And if you love LifeKit and want more, subscribe to our newsletter at npr.org slash LifeKit newsletter.
Also, we'd love to hear from you. If you have an episode idea or feedback you want to share, email us at LifeKit at npr.org.
This episode of LifeKit was produced by Claire Marie Schneider. Our visuals editor is Beck Harlan. Our digital editor is Malika Garib. Megan Cain is a supervising editor. Beth Donovan is the executive producer.
Our production team also includes Andy Tagle, Margaret Serrino, and Sylvie Douglas. Engineering support comes from Carly Strange.
I'm Andrew Limbong. Thanks for listening.
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