Our minds are amazing but like most things, they perform better if they are used regularly.
For most of my life I have been an avid reader. For the last one and half decade I have spent much of my time writing. That includes thousands of articles on the web and five books.
Most of my reading beyond the proof reading of the long proposals that we produce at work has been newspapers. This past fall I decided that for my own mental health I needed to read a few books. The first one I tried failed to interest me. Now that I have read a couple of books including the last one which was 479 pages, I am not certain that the first book was the problem.
As I really got into the third book, it occurred to me that my brain was starting to make connections more easily than it did in the second book. Though I read the book over a period of six or seven weeks, I found myself more engaged than I was by the second book which had the same author and a similar plot. It was also easier to pick up the book after having missed a few days reading. When I wanted to go check on something about one of the characters, it was easy to thumb back to the passage I needed. My hands seemed to find what I was looking for quickly.
Could it be that reading complex books primes our brains to keep track of more information than if we only read short articles?
While this is just anecdotal information from one person, I cannot help but wonder if this might be a big problem in our society. Reading a long book with a complicated plot, a number of characters or ideas takes far more skill than reading a newspaper article or a tweet. Reading a book takes more thinking and stimulates your imagination far more than consuming a short article in just a few minutes. Of course any kind of reading (along with drawing your own conclusions) does far more for your mind than passively absorbing the pronouncements of a television talking head.
We seem to have an overabundance of people whose thoughts appear unconnected at best. Perhaps there could be many reasons, but maybe one is the decline of reading, especially long books. According to an article in the Washington Post, " the share of Americans who read for pleasure on a given day has fallen by more than 30 percent since 2004." Leisure reading has hit an all time low.
One way to think about it is the dining table pictured at the top of the post. Imagine that the newspaper articles you read are mostly from the same few authors who join you regularly at your table and sit at the same places each time. Like good friends coming to dinner, you have a pretty good idea what they are going to say. The conversations are pretty simple and typically exactly what you expect.
A complex book is a far more complex dining scenario. Imagine the author as a puppeteer who carefully places people at the table and removes them before you really get a chance to know them. Of course the characters at the table change rapidly and you have to stay on your toes to gather as much information and connect the dots as the author/puppeteer gives you the opportunity. Figuring out the story takes concentration and some skill as the characters rotate around your dining table often taking different seats at the table. Even the light on their faces changes. The whole thing is challenging but very rewarding when it all comes together.
I know that I am pleased to be back in the reading grove. A good book beats good television any day.
Comments