Evolution of Reading in the Age of Digitisation, or E-READ, is an interdisciplinary research network chartered with a goal "to improve scientific understanding of the implications of digitization." In 2019, E-READ published The Stavanger Declaration Concerning the Future of Reading, summarizing the research and findings of "almost 200 scholars and scientists of reading, publishing and literacy".

One info dot listened under the "Key findings" of the Stavanger Declaration is that "comprehension of long-form information text is stronger when reading on paper than on screens, particularly when the reader is under time pressure. No differences were observed on narrative texts".

This is a research tidbit that I was already familiar with before reading the Declaration the other week. Almost all of my book reading is digital... and it's to counteract the weaker comprehension level that a few years ago I set a goal to write 100 words for every book I read, first on Goodreads, and now on thombehrens.com. My theory is that writing a mini book report about each book (and knowing ahead of time that I would have to do it) would help me pay closer attention while I read. And, if I forget everything about the book entirely, at least I have a set of notes to return to on the web and on my desktop. This has turned out to be a rewarding practice - I don't know if my "comprehension" has gotten stronger, but I am happy for my self-imposed moment of reflection after finishing a book.

It's also turned out to be a great social opportunity - book reviews seem to be the thing that readers of my website like to get in touch about. I got rid of my Goodreads account a few years ago as part of a larger social media cleansing and self de-platforming effort. Having my reading list and book progress stay personal until I choose to share updates is nice, and seeing what all my bookish liberal arts friends were reading on Goodreads kind of gave me imposter syndrome, but I did love other parts of the atmosphere of book-focused conversation.

One thing I took with me when I left Goodreads was the concept of setting an annual goal for how many books to read. This annual goal feature is also built into several e-reader and book tracking apps. But there's another excerpt from the E-READ Stavanger Declaration that has me rethinking the annual book count goal. Once again from the Key Findings section: "Readers are more likely to be overconfident about their comprehension abilities when reading digitally than when reading print, in particular when under time pressure, leading to more skimming and less concentration on reading matter."

This posture of hurrying/skimming through ebook text is likely engrained in me due to the fact that all the other screen reading I do is all skimming work: processing emails at work, reading long files of code, finding relevant Google search results, or peeking at news headlines, for example. It makes sense that it would be a hard transition to leave that all-day skimming mode, sit down in front of a different screen (my iPad), and try to immediately flip into to deep reading.

I think that this is hard-to-break posture of "skimming" is probably further exacerbated by setting myself a quota of books to read. When I sit down to read, a book quota turns book reading, at some level, into a productivity exercise. I have incentivized myself to move through the text as quickly as possible, and added in the "time pressure" component the Declaration mentions above. Comprehension ends up being deprioritized.

The last info dot in the "Questions for future research" section of the Stavanger Declaration asks "What can be done to encourage deeper processing of texts read on screen?" After some brainstorming, I've decided that my reading goal for 2023 is going to be a number of hours spent reading, not going to a number of books. The theory (and my observation in the last two weeks of trying this out) is that this will incentivize me to read more slowly, flip back to reread sections as needed, and generally work to more deeply understand a text as I go through it. The goal of my reading is simply to be reading... And in that sense the "minutes spend reading" metric seems to be a truer measure of that goal.

Happily, tracking this goal is made uniquely accessible for people like me who do all of their reading on an iPad. Instead of starting and stopping a timer every time I open or close a book, and trying to total up and track my reading time over days and weeks, my plan is to use the iPad built-in reading timer: Screen Time. My plan is to check the total time I spent in my reading app when I get my screen time report every Sunday, and then write down that weekly total in a spreadsheet. My hope is that this mix of automated tracking with manual checking in should help make the goal easy to track, and add some mindfulness to the practice as well.

So - stay tuned! Book reviews will still appear on thombehrens.com (although I've gotten lazy about it in recent months). I'm unsure whether this new goal will lead to fewer book reviews, or more - but maybe the quality of insight will increase? We report; you decide.

What are your reading goals for 2023? Have you developed any approaches or habits to help you get more of what you want out of reading? Send me an email and let me know.

Peace,
Thom

P.S. I found the Stavanger Declaration and did the initial thinking for this topic listening to this episode of the Ezra Klein show. The episode was suggested to me by Anne Helen Peterson in her Culture Study newsletter, which I often find interesting and recommend checking out.