In recent years, cultural commentators have sounded the alarm about
the dire state of reading in America. Americans are not reading
enough, they say, or reading the right books, in the right way.
In this book, Alan Jacobs argues that, contrary to the doomsayers,
reading is alive and well in America. There are millions of devoted
readers supporting hundreds of enormous bookstores and online
booksellers. Oprah's Book Club is hugely influential, and a recent
NEA survey reveals an actual uptick in the reading of literary
fiction. Jacobs's interactions with his students and the readers of
his own books, however, suggest that many readers lack confidence;
they wonder whether they are reading well, with proper focus and
attentiveness, with due discretion and discernment. Many have
absorbed the puritanical message that reading is, first and
foremost, good for you--the intellectual equivalent of eating your
Brussels sprouts. For such people, indeed for all readers, Jacobs
offers some simple, powerful, and much needed advice: read at whim,
read what gives you delight, and do so without shame, whether it be
Stephen King or the King James Version of the Bible. In contrast to
the more methodical approach of Mortimer Adler's classic How to
Read a Book (1940), Jacobs offers an insightful, accessible, and
playfully irreverent guide for aspiring readers. Each chapter
focuses on one aspect of approaching literary fiction, poetry, or
nonfiction, and the book explores everything from the invention of
silent reading, reading responsively, rereading, and reading on
electronic devices.
Invitingly written, with equal measures of wit and erudition, The
Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction will appeal to all
readers, whether they be novices looking for direction or old hands
seeking to recapture the pleasures of reading they first
experienced as children.
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