There’s much concern around reading. It’s demonstrated through the anxieties around our children’s ability to read – how soon, how much, and how fast. And we’re right to be concerned. Reading is the most basic and low-cost, yet has the power to change the world. Not just about a passing school grade, but being able to read can lift people out of poverty and enable dreams.
When I was little, I read most things I could get my hands on. Made up for the lack of libraries were rent-a-book stores or just casual borrowing. From Dragon Ball Z and Doraemon to Journey to the West to Jane Eyre and The Godfather, I had no filter for what I should or shouldn’t read. Some books I read so that I could talk to my friends, others just to pass time. This type of reading is considered entertainment reading. As much as there is concern around reading is what kids are reading, but I think that it is being misplaced. Reading for entertainment is the best way to encourage children to read, and it is through reading a wide variety of topics that they may have the chance to find what sparks their interests. Children have many questions, and while parents are ill equipped to answer many of them, reading can be the answers. Books are never the cause of ill will, but selective reading can further that which is already harbored. One cannot be forced to read a well-informed article; it is through the path of reading everything that we can find ourselves to them. And so reading everything is what should be instilled in young minds.
We should cherish this period of reading for entertainment and exploration; let it flourish in our kids for as long as possible because it does come to an end. Puberty and adolescent bring along a different sort of anxieties, and reading becomes a need to get through the day. Like Nobita in the manga Doraemon, I wished for the copying toast so that it would only need an evening to copy pages of literature, history, biology, anything into my head to pass next day’s exams. Instead, I spent much time to memorize, only for them to be immediately expelled out of my system afterward. Perhaps we hardly remember anything we read in school because rather than it being about knowledge, it was just another hoop in order to hop along.
But time passes and one day, it’ll be about knowledge again. You’ll read because you are interested in becoming a better person, becoming better at your job. This type of reading is considered informational reading. Hopefully, it lasts ‘til the end because learning never ends. I used to be frustrated at myself because there was so much to read and I was such a slow reader. I looked into how to read faster and realized that I was subvocalizing, aka I was hearing words in my head. But eventually I made peace with it and kept on reading. If learning is for a life time, then who am I competing with? And if it is of any consolation, this sort of advice for speed reading was eventually rescinded anyway.
Over time, I have become better at reading. It doesn’t have to do with reading faster, but just from experience, which is another way of saying a lot of reading. You can gauge whether something is worth reading by the few important lines within each section. Then if it piques your interests, you can come back and fill in the details. This sort of efficiency arrives from your knowledge upon the topic and how good you are at picking out the important sentences, and there is no other way of acquiring it but through sheer volume. By layering knowledge upon knowledge, you get better and faster at understanding each time.
Then there is another kind of reading – reading for pleasure. It is different from entertainment reading in that it is actually hard work. It uses serious brain power. You are not skimming paragraphs for important ideas. On the contrary, you are poring over each sentence, word for word. A reason you would do so is because you are reading for the language itself. You read a book because you love the way the author writes their sentences, then you read another because it is how you would want to be able to write. It is inspirational for no other purpose but the act of writing itself. And because it requires focus, I get distracted often, ironically with informational reading. There is always a useful article here and there that I could read faster and more easily.
“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” How would you read if it were for ever? There’d be no point in reading faster; you’d take your time. And I hope that you are always reading something entertaining, enlightening, and enchanting.
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