We live in an age obsessed with optimization. Everything can be hacked, streamlined, made more efficient—including reading. Speed-reading courses promise to triple your reading speed, apps offer book summaries in 15 minutes, and we're constantly encouraged to consume more content in less time.
The Fallacy of Efficiency
But knowledge is not a commodity to be hoarded; it is an experience to be lived. Slow reading is not a failure of technique; it is a commitment to the text. It's the willingness to stop at a sentence because it's beautiful. It's the patience to re-read a paragraph because it's difficult.
The Ritual of Immersion
To read slowly is to meditate. It is to sync your pulse with the rhythm of the prose. It is to give the author your most precious gift: your time. In return, the text reveals its secrets—the subtext, the subtle wordplay, the emotional resonance that bypasses the scanning eye.
Try it today. Pick a page, turn off your phone, and let yourself get lost in the slow, deliberate dance of letters.
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