The reading spaces I facilitate are intentionally quiet. Stories are read aloud slowly, with spacious pauses between them. There is no requirement to respond, analyse or extract meaning. Participants are invited to listen and to remain with the stories themselves. What interests me afterwards is not only the reading itself, but what the experience reveals about attention and the conditions that allow it to settle.

In recent years, there has been growing discussion across library, literacy and wellbeing spaces around deep reading, slow reading, reflective reading and the impact of digital distraction. These conversations point to concern about our capacity for sustained attention in contemporary life. Yet I find myself wondering whether recognising the value of deep reading is enough. What makes it possible?

Through facilitating reflective reading, I have grown increasingly interested in what surrounds the act of reading itself: the atmosphere, pacing, silence and invitation. Attention does not simply appear because we ask for it. It is shaped by conditions. Those conditions matter because they influence how we attend to stories and how available we are to them.

Nor do we create the encounter itself. We create conditions in which encounter is possible. Conditions can support attention, but they cannot determine what a particular story will become for a particular reader. While facilitators can shape these conditions, what emerges cannot be manufactured or predetermined.

Learning and conference cultures, understandably, orient us towards information gathering, note-taking, visible engagement and quick evaluation. Like many professions, librarianship now operates in environments characterised by continual information, movement and competing demands on attention. Programs are naturally designed around presentations, discussion, networking and professional exchange. Reflective reading asks something else of our attention. Participants are invited, for a time, to loosen the impulse to perform understanding and simply remain with what they are hearing.

This has led me to reflect on how rarely we offer communal spaces where people have the opportunity for deep reading. We often speak about its importance, yet much less often create environments in which sustained attention can emerge.

The same is true of our private reading lives. Even when reading alone, many of us move quickly through texts, dividing our attention between pages, notifications, thoughts and the impulse to keep moving forward. We may finish books without fully dwelling within them. In this sense, deep reading is not simply about reading more slowly. It is about the quality of attention we are able to bring to a story.

That quality of attention does not depend on the reader alone. Atmosphere, pacing, silence, embodiment and permission not to rush towards interpretation all influence how we read. Expectations also matter: whether we feel observed or evaluated, whether an immediate response is expected and whether silence is welcomed rather than filled. These conditions influence our capacity to sustain attention and our availability to remain with what we are reading.

Libraries and educational settings work within cultures that emphasise measurable outcomes, participation metrics and visible forms of engagement. Sustained listening, reflective reading and inward attention, however, are less easily recognised or measured.  

The challenge of sustained attention is also not limited to young people. Much contemporary discussion understandably focuses on children, screens and digital distraction. Adults too are living in cultures of fragmentation. I have noticed this in the reflective reading sessions I facilitate with librarians and educators. Even among people deeply committed to reading, uninterrupted listening for an extended period sometimes appeared unfamiliar. Phones remained close. Attention moved in and out of the room.

Rather than viewing these responses as problematic, I began to see them differently. They suggested that sustained attention may no longer come easily, even to those of us who value reading. For decades we have asked how libraries might encourage more people to read. Increasingly, another question seems equally important: how might we create the conditions in which people are able to read more deeply?

To remain with a story, without discussion, interpretation or visible participation, involves a different mode of attention from that encouraged by many contemporary environments. This mode of attention requires slowness, receptivity and a willingness not to know immediately how to interpret the story, alongside a tolerance of uncertainty and stillness. These can feel unfamiliar in cultures of continual stimulation and performance.

Yet when these conditions are protected, attention can begin to take on another quality. The atmosphere settles. The rhythm slows. Listening itself becomes the activity rather than preparation for conversation. A reader may be more available to the story, without needing to explain, interpret or immediately respond to it. What emerges from the experience cannot be determined in advance.

I now leave these sessions thinking less about whether they have “worked” in conventional terms and more about what they reveal about sustained attention and the conditions that support it. Deep reading is not something we can encourage through advocacy alone. Recognising its value also asks us to consider whether we are creating opportunities for deeper attention.

Attention cannot simply be requested. We can, however, consider the circumstances in which reading takes place and whether people have the time, permission and continuity to read deeply. Such experiences are difficult to measure, but this does not make them insignificant.

Perhaps the future of reading depends not only on protecting books, but on protecting the conditions in which people are still able to meet them.

About the Author

Dr Susan McLaine is the founder of Bibliotherapy Australia and a practitioner-theorist whose work explores the relationship between reading, attention and wellbeing. She brings bibliotherapy into conversation with libraries and reading practice, while her current writing proposes the Reading Encounter as a theoretical lens for understanding what may emerge through the experience of reading.