The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction

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.

“what could be nicer to read than a book about how nice reading is?”

"Delightful...appealing and convincing." --The Wall Street Journal"As so many recent studies have suggested, the activity of readingitself is seriously threatened in this digital age. But Alan Jacobs --bless him -- has an approach that will warm the hearts of seriousreaders and lead many prospective readers into the deeply satisfyingswells of good prose. Reading should be a pleasure, and Jacobs shows ushow to make sure we take delight in this work, which is not work at all.This is a witty and reader-friendly book, and it's one I would happilygive to any potential reader, young or old." -- Jay Parini, author of The Passages of H.M. and The Last Station"A vigorous and friendly exhortation to get back into the kind ofreading that made you a reader in the first place." - Library Journal"Jacobs' little, witty ode to pleasure found between hardcovers is a useful reminder of the joy of text." --Dan Kois, NPR"Jacobs gives us the best entry to date in the flurry of recentattempts to augur and meditate upon the fate of reading in our time."--John Wilson, Christianity Today"It seems a rare accomplishment that a book on the pleasures ofreading could actually pull off being pleasurable itself. But AlanJacobs' newest book, The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction,does just that. It is a marvelous manifesto of sanity in an age ofjeremiads about the modern predicament of attention loss on one hand,and those proud champions of distraction singing the hallelujah chorusof a world devoid of long-form books on the other." --Trevor Logan, First Things"A passionate call to indulge one's readerly passions in thepursuit of centeredness and growth, this book just might change the wayyou think about reading." --Brendan Driscoll, Booklist"Alan Jacobs' bright, broad paean to reading is a sort of secularprayer book. It instructs, exhorts, laments, reveres; it has great faithandnullbest of allnullshows the Way. Or a way at leastnullfor authorJacobs, a college English professor, warns well that the road to readingNirvana is a highly personal one." --Joseph Mackin, New York Journal of Books"wonderful" --Micah Mattix, The Weekly Standard

Alan Jacobs is Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Baylor University. His books include The Narnian, a biography of C.S. Lewis, Original Sin: A Cultural History, and a Theology of Reading. His literary and cultural criticism has appeared in the Boston Globe, The American Scholar, and the Oxford American.

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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