These past few months I’ve come back to reading novels for the first time, really, since I was a kid. I just read them an alternative to scrolling, though, so I don’t really pay much attention. When I sit down to watch a film, I try to make sure my mind is clear, my environment is undistracting, and I try to watch observantly and engage on multiple levels. Not always easy to maintain that level of attention even for a 1.5-3h movie, to try to do so for a novel seems unreasonable. I’ve felt mostly indifferent about the novels I’ve been reading during this streak. I had one moment where I felt moved but I can’t really speak eloquently as to why or how. I have too many goals that matter infinitely more to me to make becoming a more refined conscientious fiction reader a goal, but I’m curious by-the-by how other (more experienced?) people approaach their reading.
Nobody has to take it seriously but I suspect it’s more fun if they do. Some writers plot and foreshadow as baroquely as if they were building up a philosophical argument. I just read a review of a novel I’d read and the reviewer quoted some beautiful sentences I have no memory of.
It’s more about informational density and ease of comprehension. Imagine, instead of a flowery description, you have a set of axioms that redefine certain common technical terms, and the rest of the book is derived from those axioms. You can skip the description and most likely not lose too much of the story, but you won’t go any further if you don’t comprehend those axioms and the exact way those terms are redefined. So. get ready to read the same pages for a few hours while also looking up interpretations. It’s an extreme example, but even the less literary challenged philosophers have me rereading parts many times before I’m done with the book.
I know that feeling. I’ve legit read some novels multiple times and discovered something new every time.
I realise now what I was getting at in the OP is how people massage themselves into a state of inspiration where they can maximise their engagement and what they get out of the book and the beauty of it and open their hearts to it or whatever, and how they interact with the text when they’re in that state. I realised this because I had the unusual honour of experiencing a state of inspiration the other night. Life feels pretty much dull and my heart feels pretty much shut to suggestion most of the time. What actually got me there was a completely unrelated life event (whose enchantment has already long since dried out). Seems like a work of art is the seed but the soil is life itself–how you read might be, at best, the water, so my question maybe isn’t of much use if we live in a world of concrete. I hope there’s more we can do that’s under our own control but it doesn’t seem that way now to me. (edited to rephrase a few times)