The Pleasures Of Reading In An Age Of Distraction

Description

Is reading under threat? No, says Alan Jacobs - but people do need help and encouragement to enjoy it to the full.

Jacobs's experience as a lecturer and many-time author suggests that many readers lack confidence; they wonder whether they are reading well, with proper focus and attentiveness, with due discretion and discernment. Many have absorbed the puritanical message that reading is, first and foremost, good for you - the intellectual equivalent of eating your Brussels sprouts. For such people, indeed for all readers, Jacobs offers some simple, powerful, and much needed advice: read at whim, read what gives you delight - and do so without shame, whether it be Stephen King or the King James Version of the Bible. He offers an insightful, accessible, and playfully irreverent guide for aspiring readers. Each chapter focuses on one aspect of approaching literary fiction, poetry, or nonfiction, and the book explores everything from the invention of silent reading, reading responsively, rereading, and reading on electronic devices.

Invitingly written, with equal measures of wit and erudition, The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction will appeal to all readers, whether they be novices looking for direction or old hands seeking to recapture the pleasures of reading they first experienced as children.

Reviews

Delightful yet discombobulating The Wall Street Journal

What could be nicer to read than a book about how nice reading is? Steven Pooles, The Guardian

Lively volume...prepare to be engrossed. Times Higher Education Supplement

A vigorous and friendly exhortation to get back into the kind of reading that made you a reader in the first place. Library Journal

Table of contents

YES, WE CAN

WHIM

ALL IN YOUR HEAD

ASPIRATIONS

UPSTREAM

RESPONSIVENESS

KINDLING

SLOWLY, SLOWLY

TRUE CONFESSIONS

LOST

ABBOT HUGH'S ADVICE

THE TRIUMPHANT RETURN OF ADLER AND VAN DOREN

PLASTIC ATTENTION

GETTING SCHOOLED

QUIET, PLEASE

ONE MORE, WITH FEELING

JUDGE, JURY, EXECUTIONER

IN SOLITUDE, FOR COMPANY

SERENDIP

HOW IT ALL STARTED