The reading philosophy
What type of a reader are you, skimmer or swimmer? Do you read a book cover to coveror skip the boring bits or do you read several books at the same time?
was 14, and up until that moment, I had only
read books from cover to cover. It didn’t matter how long they were, I would
spend hours drowning in a book, coming up for air every now and then, before
finishing it in one sitting. It’s the only way I knew how to read and enjoy a
book, and it formed a crippling habit. Until, that is, I picked up Emily Bronte’s
Wuthering Heights. It wasn’t the length of the book – around 400-odd pages --
I’d read books that long before and it wasn’t the language either. As much as I
was exhilarated reading it, I realised that it was Bronte’s writing that
required me to slow down. I could consume the book headily, giddily, but maybe
not in one sitting. I had to meet Wuthering Heights on its terms, not mine.
As the summer holidays came to a close, with
even less time to devote to personal reading pleasures, I had a choice to make.
What meant more to me: finishing the book or going through every word, line,
paragraph, page, chapter no matter how much time it took? Irrespective of what
I chose, the book had already ended my 14-year-reign of consuming books whole.
So I chose, for the first time, to skim through bits of the book that were
boring me. And it certainly wasn’t the last time. Wuthering Heights was
only the first dilemma.
In my post- Wuthering Heights
life, I’ve encountered so many books that aren’t conducive to reading in one
go. Each time, a tiny part of me considers this a defeat. There’s an irritation
I carry in the nook of my neck that is constant, nestling itself for the few
days that it takes me to devote time to finish the book. Many times, I’ve caved
in and skimmed through a few pages, a few chapters just to get to the end so I
could consider it ‘read’. I’ve done this for books I was enjoying, books I
couldn’t get through, and books I just had to read (this kind is particularly
frequent for me, having now spent seven years in academia). Although, while the
scale differed with each book, I still managed to have decent conversations
around those books that I had skimmed through parts of. Turns out, in most
cases, I managed to get ‘the point’ of the text.
Which brings me to a questionI’ve wanted to
stop every book-lover in their tracks and ask: when it comes to a book, are you
a skimmer or a swimmer? When that one book comes along every now and then,
something you just can’t get through at your usual rhythm, do you tarry on
through every word no matter how much time it takes you, or do you gloss over
(but still get a sense of) sections that just don’t speak to you? What is your
reading philosophy?
I know impressive readers who manage to read
extensively without skimming; a few of them find the idea of abandoning a
half-read book blasphemous. Others say life is too short to spend agonising
over books that just don’t do it for them, why waste time force-reading
something just for the sake of it? I switch between the two philosophies
myself. I agonise over books I haven’t finished, but actively work on reminding
myself it’s okay to let go, abandon, give up, retire.
In so many ways, skimming just sounds like a
lesser, lower, devolved form of reading. Why read at all if you won’t read what
the author intended for you to know? And yet, I want to make a case for
skimming because isn’t it more rewarding than giving the book a miss entirely?
Maybe the detailed descriptions of paint, wallpaper, sky, wall, etc. really do
add to the mise-en-scene of a text, but do they affect the reader’s basic grasp
on its plotline or point?
In a way, the swim vs. skim argument really
boils down to a splinter between the plot of a text and its fine print. When
especially hard-pressed for time, would you rather quickly scan a 400-page book
to identify its larger arguments, or do you take as much time as need be,
months and years maybe, but know those 100 pages really well?
Then again, there are booksthat I read
diligently which I can’t seem to remember a smidgen of, and books that I only
cursorily skimmed through that I remember really well. To date though, there’s
a spectre of dread that haunts me whenever I skim through sections of a book.
In my nightmares, I am convinced there was a throwaway sentence, crucial to the
entire plot or argument that I completely missed, making me the only reader who
came away from the book with a wildly different story. The 14-year-old in me is
still ecstatic on the days I manage to read a book in one sitting, but those
instances are too few and far between. And even though I am kinder to myself on
the instances I do skim — because I don’t have time, I don’t like the writing
or the suspense is killing me — I wonder if we can really claim to have ‘read’
a book that we skimmed through?
How does a love for books translate? When do
we consider a book truly ‘read’? There are readers who don’t re-visit books,
their quest for stories nudging them constantly in new directions and there are
readers who read the same handful every few years, the same book transforming
into a different story each time. We’re probably both, skimmers and swimmers
depending on the context, and so much more. We’re abandoners, groaners, and
evaders, compulsively addicted and consummately in love. As a voracious reader,
I’m only just learning how to be less harsh on myself over books I can’t invest
too much time in. That will continue to happen, and it’s okay. Like Wuthering
Heights taught me, love is complicated.
Source | The Hindu | 12 February 2017
Regards
Pralhad
Jadhav
Senior
Manager @ Library
Khaitan & Co
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