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Slow to read

Reading is not information processing.

Reading faster does not mean reading better.

If there is one thing better than reading, it is rereading.



Learning How to Read Slowly Again (need to register/sign-in to read article) makes all the above points and takes a look at the recent books that talk about reading.

The lines that appealed the most to me are the ones on rereading because it sums up exactly how I feel about rereading.

Oddly enough, none of the books discussed above deal with the pleasures of rereading. The book we read and loved at 20 is not the same book a decade or two later. The words have not changed, but the reader has. I recently reread “Lolita,” a book I first encountered as a callow undergraduate and thought I understood. How wrong I was. “Lolita,” on my much later reading, seemed much more shocking, and twice as brilliant. How did I miss the boat so badly? That’s one of the drawbacks of rereading: it involves a face-to-face confrontation with an earlier you, which can be a highly embarrassing encounter.

Very very true! :)

Being less self critical is the way out. :)). And it may not be that always the reader changed. The subject has evolved during the course of time as well.

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