Reading practices

Review: Deep Reading

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Cover image of "Deep Reading" by Rachel B. Griffis, Julie Ooms, and Rachel M. De Smith Roberts

Deep Reading, Rachel B. Griffis, Julie Ooms, and Rachel M. De Smith Roberts. Baker Academic (ISBN: 9781540966957) 2024.

Summary: Practices to grow in attentive reading that subverts distraction, hostility, and consumerism.

Many books on reading focus on what to read, offering reading lists of good or “great” books. The authors of this book take a different approach. They believe we are in a culture that undermines the deep reading of any text. Thus they focus on practices to subvert what they believe are three vices of our culture: distraction, hostility, and consumerism. Likewise, they believe these practices help cultivate virtue and good character. Unlike other approaches by Christian educators, they focus on practice rather than worldview approaches that often feed vices of hostility and consumerism that work against virtuous reading and the appreciation of a text.

For each of the three cultural advices the authors address, they consider two sets of formational practices

Subverting Distraction

First of all under this heading, they consider practices to cultivate temperance, particularly with the digital devices in our lives. The authors observe the disembodied attention digital technology engenders as opposed to embodied engagement with a text and a community of other readers. They suggest gradually extending periods of uninterrupted reading, leaving phones and other screens in another room. Positively, they encourage the use of practices like lectio divina and other slow reading practices to deeply engage texts rather than the skimming we often practice.

Second, they focus on “Attentive Reading Processes for a Digital Age.” Surprisingly, they do not rule out using a variety of media to engage a text: audio-, electronic-, and physical books. This is one of the first books on reading I’ve read to recognize neurodiverse readers and that reading processes will vary from person to person. Equity and inclusion allow for these different approaches, even allowing students to secure different (and sometimes cheaper) versions of a text rather than as syllabus-mandated version, requiring adjustments when referencing the text. One of the authors describes setting aside time in class for communal reading using reading logs and how this helped students develop attention.

Subverting Hostility

First the authors engage the practice of developing diverse reading lists, often using worldview as a launching point for polemics for and against ideologies. Rather, they encourage the development of reading lists to develop empathy and charity. They discuss listening to texts from the past with neighborly charity, not ignoring racism or patriarchy, but also seeing past them to enter deeply into the author’s perception of the world in their day. Sometimes a contemporaneous text with a contrasting view may be read alongside.

Second, rather than fearing harm from diverse worldviews, the authors address reading practices for interpreting worldviews. They encourage an approach of prudent wisdom rather than hostility or fear. This includes reading widely, reading primary texts rather than hostile summaries. It means reading with self-forgetfulness that seeks to meet a text on its terms rather than ours. It involves distinguishing cultural mores from good and evil. The authors also consider the use of trigger and content warnings.

Subverting Consumerism

Reading can often be reduced to a transactional activity where information is a commodity and even others in online communities are commodified. First of all, the authors explore reading a as a gift-giving conversation. This assumes reading in a community. It begins with forming open-ended questions of the text and one another and practicing generosity in conversations in putting away distracting media and communicating intent listening through one’s body. It assumes a collaborative rather than competitive approach to understanding a text.

Finally, the authors address learning to read for enjoyment, rather than just getting one’s money’s worth. They explore Joseph Pieper’s idea of leisure in contrast to the total work/total entertainment ethos of our culture. In teaching settings, they encourage beginning with easy or familiar texts and incorporating humor. One author uses commonplace books in which students record compelling passages or pair poetry and images.

Reflections

As may be apparent, this book is written by Christian educators, reflecting applications in a primarily Christian setting. Yet I believe the practices they commend may be adapted more widely. In particular, there is a crisis of student disinterest in reading in higher education, a place where reading deeply is crucial to student formation. The practices commended here appear to address the recovery of reading for joy at the heart of a lifelong love of reading.

The practices the authors commend seem applicable beyond the classroom. Many of us are conscious of the ways our culture has undermined our own experience of deep reading. In particular, the stress on vice, virtue, and character gets at what many of us believe, but do not always experience–that reading can be transformative.

I also appreciate the authors critique of worldview approaches to reading. I learned to read this way as a young adult. And I appreciated the discernment it offered me. Only in more recent years have I realized the implicit hostility with which I approached texts. This prevented me from fully appreciating them and understanding the world of an author or the characters.

Finally, there is so much here about reading in community and how that may be done well that has applicability to Bible studies and book groups. In our individualistic society, we tend to view reading as a solitary activity. I love the idea of conversations around texts as a form of gift-giving. Reading, or even talking about books with others, is almost invariably mutually enriching.

I so appreciate the approach of these authors. Rather than rail against disinterested or distracted readers, they invite us into the joy of deep reading by showing us how. Rather than complain about consumeristic approaches, they commend a better way. Instead of protesting polemics, they position us to listen and engage with charity. and in so doing, they help us become not only better readers, but perhaps, better people.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: The Social Life of Books

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The Social Life of Books: Reading Together in the Eighteenth-Century Home, Abigail Williams. Yale University Press (ISBN: 9780300240252), 2018.

Summary: A study of reading together in the eighteenth-century home, looking at how books were used and contributed to social life.

In modern life, reading is by and large a silent and solitary activity. We may gather for an author reading or a bookclub. But most of our reading, even via audiobooks is a solitary activity. The big idea in this book was that reading was a social activity, in family and social gatherings in the home. It provided evening entertainment in the home as well as sustaining spiritual life through the reading of sermons and devotional works. Friends gathered to read plays or enjoy poetry. And with the advent of the novel, reading together served to head off the fears of the fantasy life that might be indulged in private reading.

Abigail Williams offers a study at once both scholarly and a fascinating read for anyone interested in reading practices. She draws on elocution manuals, marginalia, library catalogues and subscription lists, letters and diaries, to construct for us the eighteenth century practices for reading, particularly in England. And one of the first things plainly evident is that reading often meant reading aloud. This explains the importance of elocution manuals. She details how people learned to read aloud to convey the cadences, the content, and the feeling of a work, holding the listener’s attention.

She explores the spaces in which reading occurred, primarily around the setting of the home. Within the home, she traces the rise of the library and the furnishings that would go into one. But reading also occurred in taverns, coffeehouses and other settings. She also goes into matters as diverse as lighting, font sizes, and reading habits, which often show a great deal of skipping around.

How did people access books? This varied by class. Full-length books were often too expensive for many in the working classes. Chapbooks and pamphlets and serialized books helped with this. And then there was borrowing, whether from an employer, or a circulating library. People exchanged books, making them available to more than one household. People also created their own “commonplace” books, whether by writing out a poem, or clipping one from a newspaper.

Williams chronicles the rise of the novel. This brought questions of the appropriateness of private novel reading? In addition to saving people from the dangers of private reading, public readings could “edit” out more titillating or otherwise objectionable material. Novels also offered the chance to imagine other lives.

Finally, Williams considers religious reading. Sermons underwent a shift from more extemporaneous to more structured and elaborated as they were written and published. Elocution was vital both in the pulpit and the home, to hold attention. People read together for self-improvement. It could be the Bible, works of devotion, history and science. Williams acquaints us with the most popular books of the time.

The book includes an abundance of illustrations of paintings of different readers and settings, reproduction of various forms of books including commonplace books and diaries and letters. Williams breaks the stereotype of reading as anti-social, at least in the eighteenth century. The book also gestures at the opportunity for books to be shared entertainment in our day. She introduces us to what may be a lost art, except among actors, of elocution. And it made me wonder what future cultural historians might write about books and reading in our time.

Review: Gospel Media

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Cover image of "Gospel Media: Reading, Writing, and Circulating Jesus Traditions" by Nicholas A. Elder

Gospel Media: Reading, Writing, and Circulating Jesus Traditions, Nicholas A. Elder. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. (ISBN: 9780802879219), 2024.

Summary: Addresses myths and generalizations about reading, writing, and publication in the Greco-Roman world shaping ideas of how the gospels were composed, used, and circulated.

Nicholas Elder writes to address the myths around how people read, wrote, and circulated written materials in the Greco-Roman world. It is assumed, for example, that no one read silently. Reading was a communal rather than solitary act. Likewise, it is assumed that texts were rarely composed in one’s own hand and that the gospels all reflect the same compositional practices. Circulation of written texts was believed to follow a “concentric circles model from intimate associates to a broader public. Elder’s study of Greco-Roman practices and the gospel texts reveal a much more complicated picture than has been generally assumed.

Reading

Elder observes that there are examples of both silent and vocal reading in the Greco-Roman world. He also notes at least one example in the gospels, when Jesus reads from Isaiah. Jesus would have read silently or at least scanned, to find the text he read. Reading also was not always a communal activity. For example, the Ethiopian eunuch was reading on his own when Philip came along. People read alone both silently and aloud. Also, reading aloud with others occurred in various settings, from large groups to intimate family settings, or even one person reading for another.

The gospels reflect these different reading practices. Mark reflects the oral recitations of the Jesus tradition converted to text whereas Matthew wrote a “book,” that best worked when read in sections communally. Luke reflects an account written for an individual, if we interpret Theophilus as such, that was also used communally. John is written as a document reflecting awareness of the other accounts, and complementing these. Elder notes the concluding colophons in John 20 and 21 in support of this idea.

Writing

Contrary to the idea that the same compositional practices, often in the form of dictation to an amanuensis, pertained in all instances, Elder proposes that the evidence supports a variety of practices. Both composing by mouth and by hand may be used, or some combination, whether in writing or revision. All of this may or may not be in connection with a prior oral event, with or without the approval of the speaker (such as unauthorized dissemination of lecture notes).

Elder notes evidence for very different compositional approaches with the gospels. He sees Mark as reducing oral preaching to text to be re-used in other oral readings. Matthew and Luke both reflect written compositions, working with Mark and other sources, removing the oral residues (for example, reducing the use of “and”). Matthew wrote for communal readings (its five-fold structure) whereas Luke wrote for individual and communal reading. John is more complicated, reflecting both oral and written aspects and the evidence, for Elder is less clear.

Circulation

How were written compositions circulated? One assumption is that many New Testament documents were circulated in codex, or book, form. Also, it was believed that compositions were circulated in successively larger concentric circles. This goes from initial text, to friends, a wider friend circle with feedback, a public release, and then further copying of texts by others.

Elder proposes that both the form in which they were circulated and the process varied with different documents, both in Graeco-Roman society and with the gospels. Things may be accidentally or intentionally published abroad with or without the author’s approval of the text. Or it may go through more limited circulation with authorial revision. It may even be suppressed.

Elder thinks that Mark was circulated in codex form to a select group, and presumably they circulated it to other churches. He believes Matthew and Luke to have been circulated in roll form in a public release. John, he believes, was read intramurally among friends, and then circulated more widely. This felt to me the most speculative part of his book.

Conclusion

Overall, I thought Elder raised interesting questions and proposed reading, writing, and circulation processes that are as complex as they are today. I found the section on reading fascinating as I relate to contemporary readers who also read in a variety of ways. The section on writing helped me reflect on the differences of the four gospels from a compositional point of view. I think the section on circulation the most speculative, but challenging the general adoption of codices seems to point to a direction for further research. What I most appreciated was Elder’s attention to textual detail in the gospels for clues to how they were written, form whom they were written and how they were intended to be used. All told, I thought this a fascinating account that challenged prevailing assumptions and asked interesting questions.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Do You Read Introductions?

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Beginning of the Introduction (p. 7) to the Norman Denny translation (published by Penguin) of Victor Hugo’s  Les Miserables.

Do you read the introductions and prefaces to books? And when do you read them if you do? I’m in a book group where this came up. We are reading Boccaccio’s Decameron. The edition we are using is a modern translation with a long introduction by the translator. Some of us ignored it. Some of us found profitable background. And some of us felt like it would make more sense after we had read the book, or even while we are reading the book.

I’m in the “read it, and read it first” camp, which may reflect a weird, OCD part of me. I’m always afraid I’ll miss something important that will better help me understand a book if I don’t. But I sympathize with those who read the introductions afterward, because sometimes, when it is someone else commenting on a book, the commentary doesn’t really make sense until I’ve read the book.

This is less of a problem when an author comments on their own work, particularly works of non-fiction. Often, they give helpful statements of why they wrote the book, what they are trying to get across (their argument), and how the book is organized. It fleshes out the table of contents and helps me not get lost in the forest of chapters and miss the big idea. Many writers of non-fiction write the Introduction last, perhaps because you don’t always know where a book is going to go until you’ve written it. Or it is a way of trying to bring a semblance of coherence to what they have written.

That’s one reason, when I go back to a book to review it, why I re-read or at least skim the introduction. I want to ask the question, “did they do what they said they were going to do and how well did they do it?” I also look at whether there were parts of the book that weren’t essential to the point that was being made and how well the book hangs together.

When it comes to fiction, most of the time I’m grateful when there is no introduction and we can just get into the story. Usually, an introduction feels like an admission of a writer’s lack of skill in getting his or her message across in the text itself. Most of the introductions to fiction are in classical works. The ones I appreciate the most give me the important contours of the life and times of the author and the setting of the work. I don’t find it as helpful when the introduction goes into literary criticism of the work. I would rather think for myself about it. Those who write these introductions should leave this kind of material to academic journals.

Good introductions are short. The one to my edition of Les Miserables is only seven pages for a 1232 page work. I can see why people embarking on reading a long work don’t want to wade through fifty pages before they even begin reading the actual work. What I do find helpful are footnotes or annotations that unobtrusively anticipate the details of place or culture about which many of us are unaware. To put most of this in the introduction means it will likely be forgotten when I get to page 800.

Those are my thoughts, for what it’s worth. Do you read introductions?