Deep Reading, but Perhaps Not Broad Reading?
A new book on reading and attention that doesn't quite live up to its potential
As an addendum to my now-completed series on Johann Hari’s book Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention and How to Think Deeply Again, I offer the following reflection on the new book Deep Reading: Practices to Subvert the Vices of Our Distracted, Hostile, and Consumeristic Age by Rachel Griffis, Julie Ooms, and Rachel De Smith Roberts (Baker Academic, 2024).
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This post is going to be a little different than I anticipated, because the book wasn’t exactly what I hoped it would be (more on that momentarily). But before I air my (relatively few) grievances, I will lead with highlighting the book’s virtues.
As I anticipated, Deep Reading contains many helpful reading practices that will form Christians in ways that bear a striking contrast to mainstream North American culture. Following its sub-title, the book is structured into three parts that address distraction, hostility, and consumerism respectively. In short, the book delivers what it promises, although I found the hostility and consumerism sections slightly more helpful than the one on distraction, which was a wee bit disappointing in relation to my recent series of Substack reflections on our struggles to pay attention (but this was not the primary issue that I had with the book.) Throughout the book, the authors describe reading as a timely and transformative practice, and one that is best understood as a social practice, and not merely a personal one. (And in these regards, Deep Reading had substantial resonance with my 2016 book Reading for the Common Good: How Books Help Our Churches and Neighborhoods Flourish. Note: if you don’t have a copy of Reading for the Common Good, you can get a free digital copy when you sign up for the Englewood Review of Books free weekly email newsletter.)
One of the most helpful recommendations in the book’s first section on subverting distraction, is to practice lectio divina with the texts that one reads. Lectio divina is a way of reading that has its roots in medieval monasticism, and provides some structure for praying, meditating, and contemplating as one reads.
The monks of Benedict’s time and later centuries devoted much of their lives to lectio divina because they understood this practice as a school in which we not only hear Christ, the Word of God, but also learn what it means to devote our whole selves to following Christ as part of the people of God. Christians of our own day often lose sight of the reality that our call to be disciples of Jesus means that we are to be students: hearing, studying and, most importantly, following in the way of Jesus. “In any master-disciple relationship,” writes noted Benedictine monk and author Michael Casey, “the content of what is learned is less important than the relationship itself; it is prolonged mutual presence that communicates to the disciples the spirit and the style of the elder. Lectio divina helps us to encounter Christ, it initiates us into the way of Christ.” (from my book Reading for the Common Good, 24)
Because the reader is seeking to hear the voice of God as they read the text, they are necessarily slowed down, and in slowing down and trying to be attentive to God’s presence and leading as they read, the reader also becomes more attentive to the text at hand, and engages it more deeply than they would if they were merely trying to read the text to consume it.
In the second chapter of the section on subverting distraction, the authors explore “the distractions that may arise within the reading process itself as well as those inherent among readers with a diversity of reading abilities, backgrounds, and access to texts” (53). This is a helpful chapter that reminds us that not everyone reads in the same way, and that technology does have some important benefits for readers who struggle to read printed books: including audiobooks, ebooks in which the fonts can be enlarged for those with visual challenges, and the ease of accessing dictionaries and other tools for understanding texts. The text itself can be a distraction for readers who struggle to read print books. The authors also suggest strategies that allow for a diversity of ways of reading the text, but also resist the distractions imposed by most electronic devices (e.g., reading on a device other than a cell phone that might pose less distractions.)
Since the focus of my series here has been attention and our struggles to cultivate it, I’m not going to comment on the book’s sections on subverting hostility and consumerism, other than to say that they are extraordinary and even better than the chapters on attention / distraction (The chapter “What Readers Bring to the Community: Conversation as Gift Giving,” for instance, was one of the best things I’ve ever read on reading as a subversive practice for Christians! It had much resonance not only with my book Reading for the Common Good, mentioned above, but also with my subsequent book, How the Body of Christ Talks.)
Deep Reading is an immensely wise and helpful book, so what grievances could I possibly have? My primary frustration is that the book was written narrowly with a focus on the college classroom. Of course, the authors all teach English in the college setting, so they are writing from the very heart of their experience. I don’t fault them for doing so, but I wish that the authors would have taken a more wholistic approach, balancing reading in the classroom with reading in other settings – and especially given the authors’ faith, reading in the church setting. To be fair, the authors do mention a handful of examples involving Bible studies and book clubs, but these are hardly a counterbalance to the thrust of the book’s focus on the classroom. Perhaps this was a marketing decision? Perhaps the people most likely to buy and read a book of this sort are college professors? (I know from my experience that Reading for the Common Good sold abysmally, so maybe pastors and other Christian readers are not inclined to read books about reading? In the years since its release, I’ve heard numerous times from others in the publishing trade that while industry insiders are drawn to books about reading, they generally struggle to find a market.)
In short, I deeply believe in the ideas and practices contained in Deep Reading. My convictions have led to the launch of The Englewood Review of Books, and to sustaining its work over 15+ years, even in the face of a multitude of economic challenges. And because of these convictions, I wish that the book had been written with a larger audience in mind, and more attention given to the work of translating how its practices would be relevant in churches and other settings. Christians are, after all, people of the book, and Deep Reading could have been a practical guide to leaning subversively into that rich historical identity, but alas, the authors took a narrower approach. I want everyone to read and wrestle with this book, but I’m afraid that its primary focus on the classroom will make it inaccessible to most readers outside academia.