Slow food

151208-ifmag — Would these short stories have been as enjoyable if I’d read them in a modern anthology? On a Kindle? Certainly not.

My mother gobbled books with the the same swift abandon that Cookie Monster gobbles cookies. The well-worn reading chair. The stack beside it her weekly haul from the local public library. How many times that little woman read her weight in paper I can’t imagine.

By comparison, I read at the rate that glaciers polish stone. My mind wanders. I get distracted by the physicality of a book, by my surroundings, my coffee, the light through the window.

I welcome these distractions, though. Sometimes I orchestrate them. For me, reading is slow food.