flâneur

How I read - by Henrik Karlsson - Escaping Flatland

substack.com · 2,611 words · saved by 1 readers

Sometimes, I read for the pleasure of entering a mental world I hadn’t anticipated; sometimes, I read to be transformed. This essay is about the latter kind of reading. When I want to be transformed, I chase my reading, to use Robin Hanson’s phrase. “Hunting has two main modes: searching and chasing,” Hanson writes. “With searching you look for something to chase. With chasing, in contrast, you have a focus of attention that drives your actions.” Searching is when I’m reading without a clear aim and continue to read even if I’m unsure about what the author is trying to achieve. Chasing is when I have a question I’m pursuing. Chasing makes you more active and critical of what you read. This helps you learn more. As Hanson writes, “search-readers often don’t have a good mental place to put each thing they learn. [...] Chasers, in contrast, always have specific mental places they are trying to fill with what they read, so they better integrate new things they learn with old things they kn

From Mohn und Gedächtnis, Anselm Kiefer, 2019-2020 Sometimes, I read for the pleasure of entering a mental world I hadn’t anticipated; sometimes, I read to be transformed. This essay is about the latter kind of reading. When I want to be transformed, I chase my reading, to use Robin Hanson’s phrase. “Hunting has two main modes: searching and chasing,” Hanson writes. “With searching you look for something to chase. With chasing, in contrast, you have a focus of attention that drives your actions.” Searching is when I’m reading without a clear aim and continue to read even if I’m unsure…

related reading