The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction

Cultural commentators are up in arms about the decline of reading in America. Americans are not reading enough, they say, or not reading the right books in the right way.

Alan Jacobs argues that reading is alive and well in America. Millions of devoted readers support hundreds of enormous bookstores and online booksellers. Oprah’s Book Club is hugely influential, and a recent NEA survey reveals an increase in the reading of literary fiction. Jacobs’s interactions with his students and the readers of his own books, however, suggest that many readers lack confidence; they wonder whether they read well, with proper focus and attentiveness, with genuine 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, and indeed for all readers, Jacobs offers simple, powerful, and much-needed advice: read what gives delight, and do so without shame, whether it be Stephen King or the King James Version of the Bible. In contrast to the more methodical and directive approach of Mortimer Adler’s classic How to Read a Book (1940), Jacobs offers an insightful, accessible, and playfully irreverent guide for aspiring readers. The book explores the reading of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction, and touches on topics as various as the invention of silent reading, the challenges of reading responsively, the distinctive pleasures of rereading, and the good news about electronic reading.