How to Read, Slowly

We are taught to read quickly, as if the point were to finish. But some writing is meant to be sipped. Here is a gentle way to read for understanding rather than for speed.

Four small habits

Read a short piece twice — once to meet it, once to understand it. Pause at any sentence that makes you feel something and ask why. Keep a single question in mind as you read. And when you finish, say in one plain sentence what it was about. If you can, you have understood it.

Read with a child the same way, and you give them something better than facts: the feeling that ideas are worth sitting with.