Take Slow Read to another world
THE weather has made slowcoaches of us all. After a month of high temperatures, we’re driving more sedately, shopping less hurriedly and generally approaching life with a more easygoing and gentle manner. If this is what living in Barcelona is like, put me down for a one-way ticket.
For some people, though, taking it slow has become a permanent essential to better living – and especially those folks who’ve made a virtue of Slow Travel and Slow Food. Under its mantra of ‘Calm Body, Curious Mind, Open Heart’, the Slow Reading movement is following suit as another global crusade dedicated to promoting the simple joy and delight of a good book. Providing a refuge for busy people to schedule an hour of peaceful reading, these clubs usually meet in a quiet backroom or snug of a bar or café. No homework is required, only the obvious BYOB rule – bring your own book. “Let us read, and let us dance,” suggested Voltaire. “These two amusements will never do any harm to the world.”
Ask yourself this: when was the last time you savoured the gratification found in the complete immersion of a good book (holidays don’t count).
Last week, as the mercury nudged 30, I wandered the aisles of The Secret Book and Record Store – always a favourite Dublin haunt – and came across a perfect copy of ‘Strumpet City’, a second-hand treasure at €6. Heading up to St Stephen’s Green and the shade of a majestic horse chestnut, the evocative storytelling of James Stephens transported me back to the Lockout of 1913, the heroics of James Larkin, the noble destitution of Rashers Tierney.
Time and the passing multitudes were forgotten as I went back a century – it was dusk before my eyes left the pages.
Indeed, the realisation that those same pages were fashioned from the fibres of a tree such as that under which I sheltered was a circle of nature perfectly rounded on a magnificent day.
Any chance, by the way, that RTÉ could show again the superb 1980 mini-series adapted by Hugh Leonard? Peter O’Toole as Larkin, sharing the screen with Cyril
Cusack, David Kelly, Peter Ustinov and Donal McCann – quality television that would surely stand the test of time.
So, just as an experiment next weekend, why not disarm all electronic accessories – desist from Facebook, cease Twitter, ignore emails, turn a deaf ear to texts? Then grab that book lying at the bottom of your ‘must do’ list, curl up in a comfy armchair or deckchair and lose yourself in anything from Trevor to Twain, Dickens to Joyce.
In a modern age where much of what we read is accomplished through the dull glare of a computer screen, the notion of leafing through the pages of a good book is an art that’s fast finding a renaissance around the world.
A recent study indicated six minutes of silent reading can reduce stress levels by two-thirds – more beneficial than listening to music or having a cup of tea. In this digital age where we merely skim and scan, reading is the ultimate holiday for your head. Final word on the topic to our own master of the art, Oscar Wilde: “It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.”