Maybe You Should Read Books Slower

Great books are like sunsets: meant to be admired.

Penelope Steunenberg
3 min readNov 7, 2019
Photo by iam Se7en on Unsplash

A good book, beautifully written, is a piece of art worth savouring, it’s worth submerging yourself in — the structure, the story, the message.

Find those books that authors have poured their hearts into, deep works, works of meaning, purpose, wisdom.

Take a moment to pause after a beautiful sentence, dwell on the imagery, the emotions it arises. Close your eyes, reflect on it, take your time.

Speed reading is overrated

We live in a society totally obsessed with speeding stuff up, consuming everything as fast as possible.

We’re sucked into the rhetoric. I’ve heard people boast about it; proud of ripping through hundreds of books super fast. As if numbers are all that matters, as if consuming novels or non-fiction works is just a checklist.

This isn’t a phenomenon I’ve seen with other forms of art, you don’t see people rushing around galleries or museums, running through some ribbon afterwards claiming they deserve credit for doing it all the fastest.

People would look at you strangely if you listened to your favourite music at double speed.

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Penelope Steunenberg

Empowering others and thinking deeply, sharing short stories with big lessons. I am especially interested in morality, philosophy, and mental illness.