"You aren’t enjoying reading? Then read longer! Read faster! The problem is you!"

"But the corollary to this way of reading — of taking books down in gulps rather than sips — is that you will discover much more quickly when a book isn’t for you, and you can then set it aside without the nagging suspicion that you might have sabotaged it by your method of ingestion.... Once I’m actually enjoying a book, it really does feel as if the pages are turning themselves; I find myself reading in all the little pockets of time that were once reserved for the serious business of checking to see if my dishwasher pods have shipped. And pleasure is, after all — once I scrape away the layers of self-image and pretentiousness — the reason that I read. When I’ve found the right book, and I’m reading it the right way, reading is fun — head-tingling, goosebump-raising fun. It’s a vivid and continuous dream that is somehow both directed from without and cast from within, and I get to be awake for it. Netflix can wait."

From "Why You Should Start Binge-Reading Right Now" by Ben Dolnick (NYT).

Have you lost the habit of reading books — either because you've become binge-watcher of TV (which I hate to tell you is all that Netflix is) or because you've been reading screens and have developed a style of reading (searching, wandering, jumping about, writing) that is so completely different from what a book seems to want you to do to it? If so, maybe the solution is to find a new way to read books that is more like what you've been doing staring into screens. That's where Dolnick (a novelist) wants to push you. It involves sitting with a book for a long time but reading it fast — binge-reading.

Will that work? Dolnick discovered the method he recommends one night when he had nothing to do all evening but read a book: "the power went out and, unable to watch Netflix or engage in my customary internet fugue, I lit a candle and picked up a thriller by Ruth Rendell." At some point he found he was reading very quickly and the reading material proved fascinating and compelling. If you'd just read fast and long, you could have the same experience. Even if the power is not off? Even if there's still some life in the battery of any iPad or laptop? Well, he's saying he made the discovery under these stark limitations. You can just take his advice and do it.

But how? You've restructured your mind. You've followed your own impulses and responses, and you've come to find reading nonlinearly, jumpily, on-line is your style. That's me. Maybe you're the person who binge-watches television. But whatever. You're doing it your way. Why should you change? Because you should be reading books? Dolnick isn't saying that. He's saying reading is fun. (Like the old library poster.)

I understand the concept: If you'd just get to the point where you see what Dolnick saw that time when the power went off, you'd keep going and you'd make book-reading your thing too. It would be just as good as the other things you've been doing with your attention — or better. Maybe, but are we not having fun with our on-screen reading? Are we not having fun watching television? I guess I could read a book on the psychology of fun. I have read in a book — long ago (this book) — that the things we fall into doing for fun can put us in a condition of entropy, which doesn't feel good at all. Anyway, I doubt if the enticement to reading books — come on, it's fun — will work on many adults, and when I think about spending more time sitting with an actual book, I don't think about racing through it, gulping. I think about looking at really great sentences and experiencing aesthetic pleasure.

But that's just me. And I've found a way to read a lot of books. I go for long walks and listen to audiobooks. That forces me to proceed through the whole thing linearly. My jumping-around style of reading on line can't take over. I'm on the book's time. And I'm getting out, moving around, and giving my eyes a break from looking at words. That works for me. I think my solution is better than Dolnick's, better for me anyway, perhaps because what I do reading (and writing) on line is better than what Dolnick says he does — the "internet fugue" of poking around doing things like "checking to see if my dishwasher pods have shipped." And I think the books I'm audiobook-reading are higher quality. A thriller by Ruth Rendell? I know. It's for fun. That makes me feel like poking around on the internet, getting ideas about the history, philosophy, and psychology of fun... and then write a blog post about it, have an in-person conversation about the blog post with Meade, and then go on a long walk and listen to "Kafka on the Shore."

You have your fun, I'll have mine.