I feel like I'm really missing out, but it's so hard to concentrate and enjoy the book when I have to reread a paragraph several times.

or online summaries. i almost cant read w/o them

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just don't let me down...

It can also help if you read it out loud.

Keep a dictionary by you and look up any words you don't know and then write them down. That way you'll learn them better and you won't have to look them up again.

You could also try reading short stories, which can be a bit less daunting :)

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One drop is lonely
Two drops okay
Three drops can make a spray
Four drops get carried away

Here's one: http://www.marin.cc.ca.us/~don/study/7read.html

I'm a big reader but I'm a parent and much older than most people here.I was also the first person I knew of on the internet and I've been watching it affect my kids and others. I bring this up because of an interview I heard this morning on CBC radio by a scientist who is studying reading from a neurological standpoint. She believes (and I have, for a while) that while the Net and Google etc are great tools, they are changing - for the worse - the way we read, comprehend and analyse written information. In a nutshell, the brief synopses, and short attention span we tend to have are "re-wiring" the way older people like me read and setting up the "wiring" if you will, of younger people so they are incapable of deep comprehension and analysis. This isn't an all-or-nothing situation of course. Reading a lot of books and in depth articles will help vs only suing Google.

She also pointed out that reading has only been around for a bit over 5000 years and our brains are not set up naturally for it. We learn it and develop it in certain ways. Because it's not a natural process of our brain, if we "train" the brain in short, shallow ways of reading & comprehension, ONLY, then that's all we'll have to work with throughout our life. A bad prognosis for future education. Even those of us like me who grew up reading lots of books but are now on the Net a lot are affected. ANd I have noticed the differences. I now usually have two or three books on the go at any given time but don't devote the same time I used to before, because I start to glaze over, tune out. THis isn't entirely the Net's fault. Newspapers noticed the trend about 10+ years ago and that is why papers like USA Today offer only short and shallow articles, People magazine and others can't hold their readers attention for more than 2 paragraphs. Even major papers often synopsize a major article in a paregraph. Another culprit may be that we are just so rushed (we're doing that to ourselves) that we flit from stimulus to stimulus, channel to channel, paragraph to page end.

This may also explain (this is my theory, not the scientist's)  why we tend to elect politicians who do not (and apparently can not) go in depth into issues or analyse real data beyond "trends" and poll data. THis way they don't lead their citizens, but follow them.

Neither the scientist (if you've lasted reading this post, this long,lol) or I think Google or the Net are inherently evil. We should just use them as quick tools, but ADD significant reading to our lives.

Post edited at 10:54 am on July 20, 2008 by Al Legator

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A Parent, old geezer, and occasionally right. Good judgment comes from bad
experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.