Free Reading and Reading Under Authority
Dear Reader,
As I’ve spent my summer completely destroying the free-reading time of many a good soul this summer, I have splendid inspiration for this month’s piece. Whether that I means I should really set forth, as it might invite a response of “too soon!” from some of those I’ve tormented, I cannot say. But I am doing so anyway.
Summertime is a great opportunity to consider the differences between free reading and reading under authority. For all but the most bookish, summertime is frequently the only time that many people find themselves doing free reading. And so I didn’t want to save this piece until September. (I also didn’t want to write it sooner because, uh, reasons of those readers under my guidance perhaps observing that I was ruining their free-reading leisure.)
Free reading is quite simple: it’s picking up the books you want to read when you want to read them.
Reading under authority is also quite simple: it’s having some outside authority telling you what books to read, and often even when to read them.
Light and ready definitions in place, let’s get into the nuance of these a bit more. Reading under authority is especially a varied and engaging territory, so we’ll start with free reading as it’s a less demanding subject of inquiry.
Free Reading
My favorite form of reading is free reading. I subscribe to Foxed Quarterly because that publication does a fantastic job of simulating the experience of free reading, even though it’s technically a carefully organized quarterly. Free reading is just as it sounds: see a read, read the read.
In a certain sense, this includes the selection of random books from your personal library, whether for first readings or re-readings. It can be a random article—whether one saved up or one that just popped up. It can be a bookstore find—whether new or used (though used have the benefit of added whimsy). It includes the odd magazine or book finds from your local library—or even a library you’re simply visiting and have time to read in for a moment.
The only organizing principle of full free reading is that you’re reading what you want, when you want. “Today’s the day.” And off you go. Or, “Ooh, what’s this?” And away you go.
The time we most desire free reading, of course, is when we are reading under authority.
And reading under authority comes in at least four loose categories: academic reading, book clubs, mentoring reads, and reading around a subject.
Academic Reading
While the heading of academic reading is fairly straightforward, sometimes it’s helpful to realize that it can come in a few flavors. One is the familiar set of lists that get assigned in K-12 education, or ones that must be read for school projects. A thing that’s pretty common among students is that by the time they reach high school, their entire reading list has become a perfect circle with their academic reading list, if they’re even reading that. It’s a sad state of affairs in certain respects, but all too common.
While almost everyone experiences the K-12 academic read, not quite as many experience the college course lists, and even fewer experience grad seminars or PhD thesis lists that can be found in many an annotated bibliography (if you know this last, you know how annoying that task is).
The college list is basically the same as a high school reading list, just a tad narrower perhaps. Grad seminars aren’t too much different except that the discussion structure around the text typically is. As for an annotated bibliography—that’s just the list of reads you’d have to attend to for a thesis (PhD or otherwise).
All of these reads have this in common: your academic pursuits are the authority under which you must read. You don’t have flexibility of “going off book”. And oftentimes, an actual academic authority—meaning a person whose face you can point directly to—is the one controlling your read.
Book Clubs
There’s quite a bit of variety in book clubs—and they obviously don’t have to read books exclusively. But most do, so I’ll use “books” a bit expansively, as I often do.
For years, I’ve run one or more of what some have merrily called “book club.” Others have deemed it a reading seminar; most shake their heads about what term might encompass the torment they encounter. The key thing is that while participants volunteer their time, I have chosen the reading. Thus, even though they have the freedom to decide whether to participate, they are still reading what’s been selected for them, not reading necessarily of their own choosing.
This can level up a bit. The Catherine Project, a more recent adult ed initiative, has programs where aside from conversation you can participate in smaller tutorials wherein you’d be writing papers. That’s a book club that’s nearly academic, though it perhaps better fits under the old “Republic of Letters” heading.
Book clubs aren’t all such odd collections. In fact, they are often sponsored by local libraries and bookstores. Go into a local library, and you can frequently find a few reading communities within. The same goes for a bookstore, where they are even more motivated to develop reading groups. In my local bookstore, they have a section devoted to book club reads and often host book clubs at their location.
Observe, though, that these relaxed clubs still involve a form of reading under authority. While selection of a book might rotate among members or be voted upon, the individual reader doesn’t have full freedom once committed to being in the group. This isn’t necessarily a failure or problem of book clubs—it’s simply part of their substance.
Mentoring Reads
Mentoring reads take two forms: explicit mentorship and informal mentorship. In the former category, say a life coach or spiritual director, you have agreed to read what is assigned. These assignments can be for discussion with your mentor or for personal journaling.
In informal mentorship, the commitment is lower. That is, this type of mentorship lands somewhere between free reading and reading under authority. You technically aren’t obligated to the read, but there’s still some sense of obligation given the implicit mentorship.
Mentoring reads are therefore a little quirky. Some are definitely reading under authority and some are a little blurred as to the demand placed on the potential reader.
Reading Around a Subject
This is probably my favorite form of reading under authority, because it often falls near to free reading. Unlike academic reads, wherein one is bounded by disciplinary or instructor-determined constraints, reading around a subject means reading around any subject.
So, to use an example that obviously has no connection to yours truly, if I decided to read up on the history of spinning tops and literary uses of spinning tops and applications in physics of spinning tops, there isn’t an academic program for that, nor would I necessarily be turning that pursuit into anything other than a continuation of a hobby.
Reading around a subject might be considered under the heading of “passion projects”, but I think that plenty of people read around a subject without being in the throes of passion. Sometimes such reading is noodling, sometimes it’s because there’s learning that must occur for some domestic project, sometimes it’s simply because one was struck by a strange muse for a day.
Of course, reading around a subject can run parallel to academic reading—readers are often chasing footnotes or the biggest (best-known or unique) books in a subject area. Thus, one is “under the authority” of those footnotes or the list of the influential books.
And that’s the joy of reading around a subject: it can range from simple interests to the height of scholarship. You’re now bound by that subject, which can prevent a severe limit, but you’re at least only under obligation to the subject. You answer to yourself and your subject matter, nothing else. It’s not as flexible as free reading and your “mentors” (the texts you must read) might be authored by those long-dead, yet the experience is still distinct. It’s you and your subject. And into it you go.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t include reference to “The Idiosyncratic School of Reading” which not only covers the precise territory of this month’s newsletter, but also does it much better. Fortunately, I’ve never minded suffering by comparison, especially as a writer. It’s a natural place for me. And as this newsletter’s whole purpose is for the sharing of and delighting in the reading experience—or perhaps learning more about its potential delights—there’s no reason for me to bury better reads. Indeed, it’s all the more reason I should share them. Take up and read of the “Idiosyncratic School” and the “Vigilant School” and the guiding virtue of “Whim”. The piece is worth the history alone.
Happy reading to you,
Kreigh
P.S. Do I think all pieces should be 400 words? No! Just that many should be. Or could be if their authors attended to them a bit more. (This is what I observed in this piece’s lengthy postscript.) I did, of course, just offer two pieces in a row that were around 400 words, largely for you to consider for yourselves. The one was almost too tight in that I left out a little nuance I wanted to include. As for the other, well…
P.P.S. Last month’s post received some comments. Among them was the question of whether I basically agreed with its author. (That was an extended quote from So Many Books, for those who didn’t observe that it wasn’t my authorship.) The short answer is that I fundamentally agree with its first and last sentences, but would struggle to find the method of reading the author advocates for as (1) the only form of next-level reading and (2) always superior to taking one’s time with a book.
But there is much to be said for taking a book in, all of it at once, in something like a one-sitting read. Sometimes that read itself can be complete, can be full. And sometimes that read sets the stage for a different way of full reading, as can be seen in the example of one prolific reader who clocks in 300 books a year:
But, this professor-turned-bibliophile doesn’t necessarily read all these books the old-fashioned way.
You don’t have to read every word
O’Hara likes to read standing up at a lectern in his office first thing in the morning, away from the distractions of his desk, laptop and cellphone.
He stands facing a window, holding a pencil in his hand with one finger free to scan each page and turn pages as he goes along. He keeps a pad of paper handy to jot down any notes he takes on the book, or any passages that inspire him or that he wants to revisit later.
On his first read-through of the book, he will scan each page for one second and pick up information that way. He says it helps him know the landscape of the book.
“It’s like planting a flag, a trail of breadcrumbs. I know I want to come back here at some point,” he said. “I don’t have to read every word super slowly again the way that we did in middle school where we just got bored by books.”
On his second read-through of the book, he will go much more slowly than he did on the initial scan, but the reading “can be very deep, but also still fairly fast.”
“It’s when we try to just grind through something that we don’t get anywhere,” he said.
On a third read-through of the book, he will re-do his first flyover of the book.
When people think about reading books, they often think about “really thick books with lots of dense prose; we have to read every word and read it really closely, and then you’re going to be examined on it,” O’Hara said.
Although he has his scanning and deep reading method, O’Hara said his method of reading will vary by which kind of book he’s reading.
I love that last little bit—varying his method of reading based on what he’s reading. No amount of technical training, methodological training, can prepare you for that type of maturity in reading. And, sadly, little high school or university instruction prepares readers to even recognize that that sort of dexterity can be employed. That’s where I agree with the spirit of last month’s quote from So Many Books. Its not merely in middle school where one gets bored by books—you can find desiccators of texts in any discipline and at about any point in your reading journey.
The maturity to vary your reading style to your reading purpose—to vary “methodology” or even just your intensity based on what’s before you and why it’s before you—this is what is so often lost among mature adolescents and adults. It’s an underdevelopment (“stunted growth”), and one that is sadly as common as So Many Books highlights. While I might disagree with that book’s singular remedy, welcoming it rather as one among many, I readily recognize its diagnosis.
Indeed, it’s been this very newsletter’s impetus.