Speed Reading Through Life No More

In first-grade, my teacher, Mrs. Beamer, asked me to read aloud. I confidently skipped across the pond of a story and pronounced mosquito as it looked: mo-skwi-to.

The plot now eludes me. My mispronunciation does not.

Yet, I remained an avid reader, due to my introverted tendencies or desire for a life outside of four siblings, a middle child trait. Given another trait of wanting to do what my older sister and brother did, I desperately wanted to read whatever they read. I wanted to speed things up.

Enter fifth grade. And Mrs. Smith, a special education teacher devoted to the art of reading. Reading was an art? I didn’t know that. Neither did most of my teachers when aI was selected with a dozen or so others to participate in a Speed Reading Class taught by the same Mrs. Smith. Any excuse to remove myself from rote classroom activities was worth pursuing. I wish I hadn’t.

What is speed reading? The process of rapidly recognizing and absorbing phrases or sentences on a page all at once, rather than identifying individual words. And who effectively decided this was something for 5^th graders? Evelyn Wood, possibly the government, and my mother. Who the heck was Evelyn Wood? A Mormon housewife who developed a course for speed reading adopted by schools and institutions everywhere. Four U.S. senators demonstrated and endorsed Wood’s method on national television. While she made a load of money, her methods were called into question by everyone from NASA to me.

Time during the holidays week originally scheduled to watch our granddaughter was warped by my husband’s Covid. I snuck through the portal of aloneness and spent the better part of days reading books.

I read Prophet Song, At the Edge of the Wood, The Nature of Water and Air, The River, The Town, and few others, and thought, yes, I wanted to come home within myself.

Thanks to my formative reading practices, I often would “scan read,” particularly on digital devices, for facts and information. Author Nicholas Carr used the term “shallows.” To refer to how we’re reading now. Skim, fuse. Skim, fuse. Those speed-reading powers that be took something away from me—the power to comprehend, the desire commune, to be one with the words, to swim beyond the shallows. I often wondered if it didn’t damage my writing in some way. Or did I always have a propensity to write fast, and fill in later?

Author of Reader, Come Home, Maryann Wolf, in her other best-seller Proust and the Squid, argues “that there is not one cell in our brains devoted to reading” and “6,000 years ago, our brains began to wire themselves for circuit to read symbols that would eventually morph into the power to read.”

Like the octopus that has become my totem, reading is many-tentacled organism. As I read Regina McBride’s The Nature of Water and Air, I was afloat in the green lands of Ireland, leftover from Paul Lynch’s Prophet Song, which was connected to Lauren Groff’s The Vaster Wilds in a weird way of survivalist stories, which then also connected to At the Edge of the Woods, where the character cooks in the most rustic sense. Then I romped through the culinary Midwest with Kathleen Flinn’s Burnt Toast Makes You Sing Good, which eventually led the author to Paris.  

My brain selected these books, and therefore formed new circuits and entered a more mesmerizing, meditative state of reading (meaning, I skid through the house with slippers half on, with nose pointed in book).

Ironically, when I read At the Edge of the Woods on Kindle, I felt empty at the end. But as unsettling as the ending was for Prophet Song, I wanted to read the physical book again. I wanted to go beyond. Maryann Wolf talks about “time to synthesize the insights,” the body of work, the characters that stay with you for days. Time devoted to a physical book, to hold in our hands like one holds a baby. A creation to nurture, to raise, send out into the world with all the understanding capable within us at our disposal. Also known as better comprehension.

She also suggests if we decide from the start, what is the purpose of our reading— for information, for understanding the complexity of the world, or for enlightenment of the self? Can we maintain a goal of deep reading, when necessary, even if we don’t know we need it?

Often, I can hardly explain why my husband needs to read a book. I want him to experience the beyond too, like a trip on magic mushrooms—not that I’ve done that before. It’s that ah ha moment when scientists say everything is activated. We’re permitted beyond it.

Last week, I stopped into Joy and Matt’s Books in Over-the-Rhine, where the owners packed a punch into every shelf of their endearing showroom. My fingers skid across glossies and flat covers, and landed on an Alba Cespedes book, also the author of Forbidden Notebook. I wasn’t quite ready to tackle another Alba. “Do you ever feel like the books pick you?” I asked Joy. “This happens to me so often. Like then there’s common thread across the books.” Knowing the books of sojourn I’d read, without hesitation, Joy selected Italo Calvino, If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler.

Ah, coming home to myself, again.

With few words, her brain and hands selected works that matched my thoughts. This too, is that inner connection that doesn’t originate from skimming at a rate of 700 or 7,000 wpm.

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And so we find ourselves at the beginning of a new year. A chance to slow our reading, and our writing. That doesn’t mean work stops. Instead, work shops! Here’s a few chances for us to connect, as readers and writers:

MacQueen’s Quinterly featured one of my original “Mom” stories, from the early days in her care home. Egg White on My Face occasionally resurfaces for a good laugh at a daughter still coming to grips with her mother, after 50 years. You can read it here.

January 13

I’ll be appearing on Wellmed’s Caregiver SOS podcast. Live, on-air at 2:30. Visit this link for more details.

January 17th at 6 p.m. A year ago, my writing partner, Tina Neyer and I, created a space for a community of writers who wanted to meet in northern Kentucky. Thus, Gugel Alley Writers, inside Roebling Books of Newport, was born. On the 17th, we will celebrate by reading and sharing at Roebling DAYTON, KY at 6 p.m. Come listen in. More details to come.

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February 10, 10 - 12 noon. Contemporary Arts Center. As part of the ongoing Creativing Writing Project, I’ll be leading a workshop on the theme inspired by the newest CAC exhibition by Tia Shani, My Bodily Remains. Visit www.cac.org. soon for details on signing up.

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NEW and On-going

Pauletta Hansel and I are pleased to announce two of our FREE Caring for the Caregiver writing experiences will be IN PERSON. We know this is important to many of our participants, so we are happy to offer this in partnership with Giving Voice Foundation and Jewish Family Services.

Our first date is Feb. 9th, 10-noon in partnership with Jewish Family Services Adult Day program, and August 9th, 10-noon. Watch this space, or visit givingvoicefdn.org soon to register.

Our FREE, VIRTUAL writing experiences for caregivers will continue through Much More than a Meal and Giving Voice. Tentative dates of May 7 and November 14, 10-noon. Forthcoming details will also found at givingvoicefdn.org soon.

This Spring

New work in Edible Ohio Valley and Italian American.