October is National Book Month. And…
And I would be mortified to admit how many books I’ve read since the start of the year. Can’t make myself tell you. Listened to—that’s another story. I listen to audiobooks every day. And of course I consume a lot of printed stuff online. But not with the same attention and focus I bring to a printed page.
In not finding time to sit down with a book, I do have company. Last January, in a 1621-person survey, almost half admitted they hadn’t finished a single book in over a year. In August, iScience published a study showing that the number of Americans who read for fun went down 40% between 2003 and 2023.
Aargh. I’ve wondered what my changed behavior’s been doing to my attention span. I’ve also wondered how much the loss of sustained attention contributes to our eroding democracy. Maybe quite a lot. The blurb for Carl Marci’s Rewired: Protecting your Brain in the Digital Age says,
“The habits that accompany our digital lifestyles are putting tremendous pressure on critical components of the brain associated with attention, emotion, and memory, changing how we process information and altering how we communicate and relate, even at a physiological level.”
So…spending lots of time online hampers my ability to critically evaluate information and makes me less able to connect with others. Ouch.
But I also found a report that suggests a person can claw back those lost skills by….you guessed it: reading books. The article, “Reading’s Profound Impact on Brain Function and Health,” lists a near-magical array of benefits from reading the old-fashioned way—improved comprehension and logic, increased imagination and emotional intelligence, reduced anxiety and depression, better sleep, enhanced career prospects, slowed cognitive decline, and more—including a specific Rx for democracy, because it seems that reading helps us in “bridging cultural gaps, increasing understanding, and building a sense of belonging and identity.” If that sounds like a fairytale, I don’t think it is. The article lists studies to back up every benefit. So…
Resolved: I will crack open more books. The report promises that reading even 15 minutes a day can make a significant difference if you do it consistently. It also says reading’s benefits are enhanced if you write about what you’ve read, and/or discuss it with others. To that end, I may post some book reviews here. Or start a drop-in zoom salon for people who want to write and talk about whatever books they’re reading. (Stay tuned.) It’s selfish—I want reading’s benefits—but I also see it as trying, in one small way, to rebuild the kind of smart, compassionate country that I want to live in.