Book Savoring for Tortoises (plus a book review)
Confession: I’ve always been a v-e-r-y slow reader.
I actually considered taking a speed-reading course years ago so I could read more books in less time until it dawned on me that taking the time to savor what I’m reading is part of the joy for me.
Of course, your mileage may vary…
On his Read More Books Substack, Jeremy Anderberg recently announced an ambitious new project: He wants to read all the Pulitzer Prize-winning fiction and non-fiction—some 377 titles and counting! Between 2017 and 2021 he managed to read biographies of all 45 American presidents and evidently has been on the lookout for his next big reading challenge ever since.
I follow Gretchen Ruben (author of Life in Five Senses and The Happiness Project) on Facebook, and she likes to post a quick photo of the stack of books she reads each week—often 4 or 5 good-sized volumes.
I have friends who probably read at least this much, but it’s truly mind-boggling to me. Even if I had nothing else to do every day—which is definitely not the case—I can’t fathom being able to read so many books in such a relatively short time. I’m clearly not wired for that.
I’ve loved reading for as long as I can remember. And before I could read, I loved being read to. My appetite for hearing stories was so insatiable that my mother recorded bookshelves full of children’s books for me to listen to on 5-inch reel-to-reel tapes (in the days before cassette tapes) carefully including the instruction, “turn the page” throughout each book she recorded so that I could follow along on my own. She then taught me how to play and stop our big Wollensak tape machine and plopped me in a large armchair with a stack of books on one side and my heavy electronic narrator on the other.
I’d give anything for that precious recording of her voice today.
I was about 3 years old. By the time I entered Kindergarten the following year, I knew how to read most of the words in those books, all by myself.
As I got older, I couldn’t wait to sign up for the Summer Reading Program at the public library as soon as school was out each year, not only because that was my idea of fun, but also because I knew that if I was going to finish the required number of books by the deadline at the end of summer break, I would need to get started right away. Being such a slow reader was inconvenient, not least because there were SO many books I wanted to read!
I like pretty much everything about books, from the way they feel in my hands and what they represent, to the actual words and illustrations inside. I enjoy just being in a room full of books, even if I’m not reading them. A fantasy road trip for me might be visiting noteworthy libraries across the US.
One of my favorite childhood activities was piling into the family car and riding downtown to the beautiful old Carnegie Library in Atlanta, where they not only had a great selection of books, but you could also check out records and even paintings. Built in 1900 with a $100,000 grant from Andrew Carnegie on a $5000 lot donated by the Young Men’s Library Association (YMLA) formed 30 years earlier, the classic Beaux Art building was renovated and expanded in 1950 and again in 1966, but sadly demolished in 1977 to build a much larger and far less elegant $19 million structure in the same spot.
I loved ascending the stately marble staircase to the upstairs reading room and the satisfying “ka-CHUNK” of the date stamp the librarians used on each item being checked out. Of course, I always left with arms full of treasures—maybe even a Dr. Seuss book I hadn’t read yet!
My dad famously took his time whether browsing at the library or in some little antique store or secondhand shop he couldn’t resist, so it was never a quick visit, but at the library, that wasn’t an issue for me because I had my own exploring to do.
Some of the children’s books were in the basement reading room which featured a fireplace framed by tiles illustrating beloved stories. I loved spending time in the library—then and now.
For me, the act of savoring books goes well beyond the words on the pages to the buildings that house them and a deep pool of childhood memories and other evocative associations. A good book is truly a special treat.
It may surprise you to hear that close to 80% of the books I read nowadays are non-fiction, in part because it’s easier to start and stop when there’s no plot or cast of characters to keep track of. A faster reader might polish off a work of fiction in a single weekend, but that’s a stretch for me. I have been known to stay up all night finishing a particularly engrossing novel because once I start, I really don’t like to stop, but that’s not something I can do very often. I sometimes pause for days or even weeks while my half-read book lies idle, so I find that my lifestyle is better suited to reading history, biography, memoir, travel, health, psychology, or personal development books. I also love perusing “coffee table books” filled with beautiful photographs, on occasion.
Autumn is just around the corner and perhaps the most bookish of seasons, beckoning us to curl up in a cozy nook with something good to read and a warm beverage. It seems almost sacrilege to rush such a ritual, no matter how many Pulitzer winners are on your “to read” pile.
It’s the perfect time for a trip to your local library or bookseller. It may be hard to imagine, as many of us in the northern hemisphere are anxiously awaiting relief from record-breaking high temperatures, but, as my grandmother would have said, “Fall will be here before we know it!”
What’s on your list of books to read before the year ends?
What should I add to my list?
I have English students who read very quickly in their native language but appreciate book recommendations in English that don’t require an enormous time commitment, and I’ve already recommended this book to one of them…
Last week, I curled up with Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change by Maggie Smith. It’s an ideal choice for a book-savorer like me, both because it’s on the short side and because it was written by a poet (although it contains no poems), and poets have a knack for distilling even their prose down to what is most essential.
Smith, a mother of two, found herself coping with a painful unexpected separation and divorce after 19 years of marriage. Newly a single mom, understandably concerned about her children and what the future might hold, she struggled to write poems during this time, but one morning she wrote a brief goal for herself and posted it on social media for accountability. The next day, she wrote another. It soon developed into a daily practice to post some sort of note-to-self... an affirmation, an encouragement, a self-directive. She ended each such post with the reminder, “Keep moving.”
These posts not only helped her get through a particularly rough time; they spoke to others who were likewise struggling with loss and change. These brief, easily digestible posts form the bulk of the book, but she also sprinkles in a few longer personal stories with commentary to provide context about the process of working through challenging times. The book is organized into 3 sections: 1) Revision 2) Resilience and 3) Transformation.
Keep Moving is very much in keeping with the More Tortoise, Less Hare philosophy. Although I initially checked this book out of the library, I've since purchased my own copy because I can already tell it will be beneficial to sit with some of these pages over time and also to revisit some of the experiences the author wrote about.
Perhaps the most intriguing and hopeful thing Maggie Smith writes toward the end of the book is that in spite of being a rather pessimistic person by nature for most of her life, this process seems to have fostered a newfound optimism within her. So I’m looking forward to the book she wrote next, which came out in April and was inspired by a poem of hers that went viral: You Could Make This Place Beautiful.
Her books on their own would have been treasure enough, but after reading Keep Moving I discovered that Maggie has a Substack on which she shares Spotify playlists she has assembled for each of the books she has written. It’s called For Dear Life with Maggie Smith. How cool is that?
Whether you are a tortoise or a hare when it comes to reading, here are a few additional short(ish) books you may want to explore if you haven’t already: the trilogy of books by Austen Kleon (who also has a Substack), Steal Like an Artist, Show Your Work! and Keep Going, Patti Digh’s Life is a Verb and Four-Word Self-Help (Patti’s Substack is From My Orange Desk), and all 3 volumes of March by John Lewis, Andrew Ayden, and Nate Powell, which are presented like graphic novels but are actually very compelling and easy-to-read history books—civil rights history that needs to be taught and learned from.
Thanks for reading my Substack! What quick reads would you recommend?
I appreciate your thoughts as well as these suggestions!
What an outstanding article Lenora, one of the best I’ve ever read on Substack. And like you, I’m a slow reader too, inclined to small sips of a book like a fine glass of wine.
I am currently reading a book called “Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains The World” by Henry Grabar. Will be doing a follow up piece on this for my newest Substack “Great Books, Great Cities” in September. So be sure to watch for it.