In this column, distributed through the Elon University Writers' Syndicate, Dean and University Librarian Brian Mathews speaks to the importance of reading in a time of fast-paced technology.
An abbreviated version of this column was published recently by several newspapers involved with the Elon University Writers Syndicate, including the “Daily Reflector,” and the “Post & Courier.”
When the Nobel Committee announced that László Krasznahorkai had won this year’s prize for literature, I pulled one of his novels off the shelf in Belk Library. I wasn’t familiar with his work, but when he was described as a “difficult and demanding” dystopian writer, I was intrigued.
I’ve always been drawn to long, complex books such as War and Peace, Roots, and Cryptonomicon. They are the kinds of works that stretch across generations. But this time, with Krasznahorkai, I couldn’t make it past three pages. My attention slipped, and my focus felt fractured. Somewhere along the way, I had lost the endurance that deep reading requires.
It’s easy to blame phones, social media, and the endless stream of short-form content. Screens compete for our attention every waking minute, training our minds to crave instant gratification rather than depth. But screens are only part of a larger pattern: a growing discomfort with stillness, boredom, patience, and the slow work of concentration that deep thinking requires. Our time isn’t the only thing being fractured; our capacity for sustained attention is too. Distraction has become the cultural default.
As a librarian, I’ve come to see that reading isn’t just an academic skill or a pleasurable pastime. It’s how we build complexity within ourselves in a time that increasingly rewards simplicity and quick conclusions. Deep reading means lingering with a text, following its ideas, and allowing it to challenge us. It slows us down long enough to notice nuance, to sit with ambiguity, to develop compassion and foresight, and to see how seemingly unrelated ideas might connect. It strengthens the mental muscles we need to navigate an ever more complicated world.
In Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain, neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf explains that the human brain wasn’t born to read: we taught it to do so. Each time we engage deeply with text, we strengthen the neural pathways that make abstract thought, imagination and empathy possible. Reading doesn’t simply transmit information; it builds the architecture of critical thought itself.
The Liberation of Reading
For most of human history, reading was a privilege of the few: priests, scholars, rulers and the wealthy. Literacy opened doors to knowledge, power and capital. As it spread, it reshaped the world. Ordinary people could interpret sacred texts for themselves, study new ideas, and imagine different futures. The printing press accelerated that freedom. Books moved from monasteries into homes and coffeehouses. Literacy crossed social lines, and ideas multiplied. Reading democratized thought itself. That same power to think for ourselves is what’s at stake again today.
That ability now feels more fragile. National surveys show that reading for pleasure in the United States has dropped sharply in the past two decades. The Atlantic reports that many students and adults struggle to finish full-length books. We skim, scroll, and summarize. Increasingly, we think in shorter bursts, leaning on AI to condense what once demanded our full attention. While AI offers an expanded toolkit for inquiry, helping us analyze and synthesize at larger scales, it works best as a partner to human reflection, not a replacement for it. The challenge is finding balance by using technology to extend our reach without letting it erode our capacity for depth. It helps us move quickly through more information, but the trade-off is depth, the kind of understanding that only comes from staying with something long enough to feel its weight.
What if, despite all our technology, we are returning to an earlier kind of culture, one built more on regurgitation than reflection? Are we sliding back toward older ways of organizing not just communication but culture itself, where ideas are consumed rather than examined and made our own? It’s a fascinating paradox. Our digital world is full of narration: posts, clips, comments, emojis, and reactions, yet so little of it invites us to pause and think. We swipe, we move on, and the cycle repeats. As James Marriott argues in The Dawn of the Post-Literate Society, we may be living through a “counter-revolution” against reading itself, an era where the screen favors immediacy, emotion, and performance over reasoning and depth. We seem to know more than ever before, yet think less deeply about what any of it means.
Deep reading is a counterbalance. It restores the diversity of thought that our fast media diet erodes. Sustained engagement strengthens the neural networks we rely on for creativity, problem-solving and design. It helps us hold competing ideas, trace relationships, and find meaning in complexity. It’s the mental equivalent of cross-training, developing the stamina and flexibility our thinking needs to meet a complicated world.
Reading as Rebellion
If the problem is cultural, the response can be personal. To read a book today is, in its own quiet way, an act of rebellion. It resists speed. It refuses to be optimized. It asks for our full attention in a world that profits from distraction and constant stimulation. When I pick up Krasznahorkai at lunch, it feels like a small protest. His long, winding sentences offer no shortcuts. Reading him reminds me that some forms of thinking cannot be rushed and that not every kind of meaning can be summarized.
Reading is also a form of self-governance. It is how we choose what enters our mind and how ideas connect in ways no algorithm can predict. The physicist who reads poetry, the engineer who studies philosophy, the novelist fascinated by biology are all exercising the same muscle of synthesis. Every voice and story expands our map of understanding, and reading across difference stretches that map even further. It builds empathy and a sense of care, and it fuels the kind of innovation and creativity that come from seeing the world through many perspectives.
The Library as a Practice of Attention
Visiting a library, too, is an act of resistance in our attention economy. It offers space to think, create, and focus within a world that rarely pauses and continually pulls at our attention. If the mind is a muscle, the library is its gym: a space to stretch, strengthen and build endurance for complex thought. The more we exercise it, the more capable we become of holding tension, nuance, and imagination together.
Within its walls, ideas coexist across time and discipline. On the shelves, books gather like conversations, from Yuval Noah Harari and Octavia Butler to Paulo Freire, Mary Oliver, and Liu Cixin. Each offers a different way of seeing, but together they remind us that intellectual strength comes from diversity, from reading across difference and letting unexpected connections form. The library holds these voices in dialogue and invites us to join the conversation.
In an age of AI and an abundance of information, libraries teach something rarer than access: discernment. They help us slow down, weigh evidence, and find patterns amid noise. They remind us that knowledge is not a commodity to consume but a relationship to cultivate. They are one of the few places left where thinking still feels unhurried, where curiosity is allowed to take its time.
I’m sticking it out with Krasznahorkai, reading a few pages each day. My goal isn’t to do a deep analysis but to rebuild my focus and rediscover the kind of concentration that feels expansive, when the mind is free to wander and wonder. It’s about putting in the reps, retraining the muscles of attention one page at a time.
In a way, I’m rebuilding my own capacity for deep attention after years of digital overconsumption. I’ve started leaving my phone in another room, keeping a book on the table instead of an iPad, and carving out quiet time each evening. These small choices remind me that reading is both self-care and social care. It strengthens our inner lives so we can more fully engage the outer world. Every time I see someone browsing the shelves or paging through a book, I feel encouraged. I recognize in them the quiet act of stepping into the life of the mind. So maybe that’s the invitation: set the phone aside once in a while and pick up a book that challenges or surprises you. Give your attention something demanding to work on. And if you need a place to start, stop by Belk Library. We can always recommend a few books that will help you think.
Views expressed in this column are the author’s own and not necessarily those of Elon University.