At the beginning of the holidays one summer, after a long year, I stumbled across Anna Karenina. All 800 pages. You may have read or heard about it. It depicts the life of Anna, a young married woman in Russia who falls in love with a handsome and affluent Count by the name of Vronsky. All very romantic indeed!

The relationships, life in Russia, various plot intricacies, pace of life, different characters - some complex, others fascinating - were riveting. Four days later, having entered another world of intrigue, extra-marital relationships, deception, corruption, Russian history, poverty, war, etc., I finished the novel.

A whole gamut of emotional life had been laid out before me, and in those four days  having immersed myself in another culture and another world, the fractures of the year had disappeared. I felt I had been mended.

This type of experience doesn’t happen often, but when it does, when we find ourselves absorbed in the lives of others, other cultures, other people, it can be invigorating and indeed stimulating.

Means of escape

You may be familiar with the film Midnight in Paris, where the main character Gil (played by Owen Wilson) goes to Paris with his fiancé, Inez. They are ill-matched. Gil is struggling to finish his debut novel, focusing on a man who works in a nostalgia shop. Inez dismisses his ambitions as delusional dreams and encourages him to stick with lucrative screenwriting. Gil becomes intrigued with what Paris was like in the 1920s to such an extent that he actually meets characters from that era. He becomes enmeshed in the lives and events of Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, among others. He finds himself falling in love with their way of life and with a beautiful woman. Unsurprisingly his life becomes fractured, and his relationship starts to fall apart.

Then there is the novel The House on the Strand, written by Daphne Du Maurier. The reader is quickly immersed in the life of the main character who finds himself thrown back into medieval times and faced with all sorts of experiences from adultery to intrigue and murder. Again, the hero experiences a division in his life between his past and present reality.

The point?

We don’t want fractures in our lives between reality and fantasy. Life is complex enough without trying to confuse the past with the present. But there is a certain magnetism in immersing ourselves in a good book and just allowing time to drift by without taking too much notice of it. Just letting ourselves become absorbed in the unique and wonderful experience of engaging with another time, and a different set of circumstances.

That’s why books can be a great means of escape from the mundane or banal aspects of life. And let’s face it this happens to us all. Life does become dull and boring - if we let it.  But after a good read we can return to the fray refreshed ready to face things - differently - or even thinking - “My life is not so bad after all!”

Mastering a book

Francis Bacon, a writer of prose in the 17th century was noted for his practical wisdom. On the topic of reading and books he writes:

‘Reading makes a full man’

‘Conference a ready man’

‘Writing an exact man.’

Bacon reminds us that some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed and still others to be chewed and digested. Some books to be read in parts, others to be read not too curiously, and some to be read wholly with diligence and attention.

I suppose we all know what he means - because we have experienced it.  Sometimes we need a book that has some depth and content, and other times we merely scan a book for some quick facts and information.  And then there are the times when all we need is something light and humorous.

Flow

As you probably realise by now, this blog is not about the benefits of reading.  It’s about reading without noting the time it takes, developing ‘flow’. We are told that ‘flow’ is a good thing.  It enables us to transcend present reality, and engage with something to such an extent that it absorbs us fully and gives us a huge sense of accomplishment and purpose.

Any time I have developed flow it’s usually when I can engage in an activity that I like. As a result I can commit to it easily.

Reading with that sense of flow has many benefits. It can distract us from our problems. Reading can give insight on situations giving some perspective and distance from them. But for that we need to step away and teach our mind to engage with something different - the stuff of a good story in a book. Remember we are the ones in control of a book, not the other way around. We don’t have to tie ourselves rigidly to rules here. We can decide if the book is worthwhile finishing, or we can just abandon it.

We possess the measure and discernment about what we actually want from a book and be prepared to let time stop when we pick one up. Someone once wrote Watch the Film, not the Stopwatch. Some advice? Keep up the habit if you have reclaimed it during the summer -  that is the best place to start.