The joys of a midlife reading week
As university reading weeks loom, Donna Bowater speaks to the adults also taking time off to rediscover their love of literature
It normally starts with a message or a notification, or the recognisable buzz of an email arriving. Out of the corner of my eye, my phone lights up and I’m drawn away from the book in front of me – no matter how engaging or well-written – to indulge my curiosity. From there, it’s just a flick of the thumb to check Twitter, open up the latest hot takes, see if anyone has liked my last Instagram post, and in the meantime I’ve wasted precious minutes of reading time.
If literature is food for the mind, then lately I have been skipping breakfast and grabbing lunch at my desk.
So when Man Booker Prize-winner Howard Jacobson recently admitted that even his concentration for reading “was shot by this bloody screen”, it was validation of what
I had long suspected but feared to admit: our time-sapping online lives interfere with reading for pleasure.
In recent years, my pile of unread books has grown as quickly as my social media following, and I’m not alone. According to a 2014-15 government survey, more than a third of adults said they did not read for pleasure. In the previous year, one in five adults in England said they bought a novel or other literature just “once or twice in the last 12 months”. Yet the same surveys showed more than a third visited social networking sites “several times a day”.
“I have lost so much time to Instagram and Twitter and countless websites, however, none of it stays with me for longer than a couple of hours,” said Emily Scaife, a writer and magazine editor from Redditch, Worcestershire.
“It’s so easy and addictive and accessible, but no one will lie on their deathbed and think: ‘I wish I had checked Twitter more often.’ However, I know I will regret it if I don’t read as many books as I possibly can.”
For many of us, reading is too often the first thing to be squeezed out of our hectic daily lives. Last year, the vice president of Dubai announced a national reading law allowing workers the right to read during business hours to help improve knowledge. But in the absence of any such law in the UK, my solution was to take unused annual leave to reconnect with books, reset my concentration and knock a hole in my list with a grown-up reading week. Like the “think weeks” advocated by Bill Gates, who is said to read 50 books a year, it was also an opportunity to embrace the mental health benefits of deep reading – many of which offer a salve for the side-effects of social media.
Research has suggested a relationship between reading and emotional intelligence such as empathy, and according to the Reading Agency, higher literacy has been linked to lower levels of depression. Social media use, on the other hand, has been associated with low self-esteem, depression and anxiety, particularly in young people. And so, unlike the reading weeks often frittered away at university, I planned to set aside my phone and laptop and devote a week to reading books.
It is a concept gaining in popularity, with others taking an even more intensive approach and escaping into the world of fiction by planning a reading holiday – unlike a holiday where reading is merely a way to pass time on the plane or the beach.
Cressida Downing, 45, a literary consultant from Cambridgeshire, decamped to Gladstone’s Library, the UK’S only residential library, for three days to re-immerse herself in books.
“I’ve got two kids, I’m selfemployed and you’re constantly interrupted if you work from home. I just felt that some of the pleasure of reading had gone for me,” Cressida says. “It was partly to give myself a nice big chunk of time to read and rediscover what I love about it.” After getting through 13 books in just three days, she “felt wonderful” and planned to return for a full week. Cressida was also inspired to launch Reading Retreat, a bespoke service that arranges short breaks for those wanting a chance to read without distraction. “Social media damages your attention span, 100 per cent,” she says. “It’s about competing for your attention and everything is set up to send you notifications, so you don’t miss anything.”
While Reading Retreat finds accommodation according to individual requirements, Alain de Botton’s School of Life has bought land in a barren Welsh valley and built a dedicated retreat called The Life House. Monthly reading weekends in the three-bedroom house include access to the School of Life’s library of books on self-knowledge, emotional intelligence and relationships.
“It’s an extraordinary property, luxurious but also austere,” Alain says. “It feels like a monastery or a church. There are nooks everywhere, so you can read undisturbed, and the atmosphere is solemn, sober and grand. We see our reading retreats as fulfilling the same position in society as a visit to a monastery in previous ages. That’s why we deliberately built our reading retreat house to resemble one.”
Attendees take turns to cook, sharing meals and discussions in an otherwise solitary weekend that focuses on reflection as well as reading.
“People who sign up tend to feel a huge backlog of unprocessed thoughts, and seek some time and space to process emotions – and to take their thinking in new directions, especially around their relationships and their careers,” Alain adds.
And while time away from backlit screens and online distractions can be appealing, that’s not to say that technology is a completely negative influence on reading. Research by the Us-based think tank, the Pew Research Center, found e-books and tablets have diversified the ways book lovers get their fixes.
Distractions are hardly new to the digital era, says Lee Rainie, the Pew’s director of internet and technology research: “There were distractions from reading when other mass communication tools came on the scene.”
Social media can also be a way of connecting with authors and other book lovers. So banning social networks and mobile communication during a reading retreat is not strictly necessary, advises Cressida. “It shouldn’t be like a punishment but technology needs to be absent or at least reduced,” she says. “I warned family and friends I wouldn’t be online.”
She offers other useful guidance for those thinking about a book break: “Don’t make it that pile of books that you ‘should’ read. There’s no virtue in only reading ‘good’ literary books.”
Finally, Cressida recommends finding a clean and tidy place to read – and buying at least a couple of new volumes.
So with that in mind, I’ve given myself permission not only to feed my mind but to feast on books – at least for a week.