Work

“I want to read faster!”—it’s the heartfelt wish of the busy modern reader.
But is speed reading truly effective? Isn’t it far more valuable, for one’s life, to read a single book carefully than to rush through ten?

In an age flooded with information, the author advocates the practice of slow reading. How do writers themselves read? How do they wish their works to be read?
Drawing on masterpieces both classic and modern—from Natsume Sōseki’s Kokoro and Yukio Mishima’s The Temple of the Golden Pavilion to his own novel The Elegy (Sousou)—Hirano introduces practical methods for acquiring a living knowledge of books.

Readers will find themselves repeatedly astonished, as if “scales have fallen from their eyes,” even when revisiting texts they once studied in school. Unlike speed reading, slow reading requires no special training. With a bit of care and creativity, reading can become many times more enjoyable.

It can even enhance your work, exam preparation, job interviews, and human relationships—and above all, it is a way of reading that cultivates exceptional creativity.