Dear Bibliotherapist,
I seem to be eternally distracted. When I sit down to read, get stuck into a few pages of a great book, I remember I ought to be keeping up with world events so I start browsing the web. Then I start thinking about work, and I end up looking for exciting work related websites, and before I know it, I’ve surfed for an hour. How can I focus? Are there any books to help me with this problem?
Dear Distracted,
Mark Vernon’s “The Good Life” is the perfect book for you to have by your bedside. Read a chapter a night, which should be the perfect chunk for you in your distracted state, then spend a week absorbing each one. Vernon introduces great philosophers through chapter headings like Anger (the discomforting opportunity), Community (or the ties that free us), Freedom (by giving stuff up), Hope (and the courage to be), Humour (its humanity and humility), Love (or how to be seriously promiscuous), Money (our frozen desire). The chapters on Seeing and Wonder will be particularly helpful to you. Each chapter employs a great thinker as a guide, with a synopsis of their life and thoughts, clearly summarizing their philosophical process, then applying their methods to the present day. These thinkers range from the ancient to the very current, and Vernon shows us highly relevant, readable ways of changing our thought processes. You will be armed by the clarity of thought that comes from great thinkers to face the distractions of life with greater equanimity.
The opposite of distraction could be said to be extreme introspection, and a dark look at this is to be found in AS Byatt’s Little Black Book of Stories. The story The Stone Woman should preferably be read aloud with a friend or partner, if there is one to hand. This describes the metamorphosis of a woman immobilized by grief over the death of her mother, into a beautiful, living, moving being made of labradorite, fluorspar, desert rose and many more stunning seams of rock. Her change begins with a raging pain in her gut, which impels her to hospital where they think she will die. Back at home, with a livid scar across her abdomen, she observes the crystallization of her skin, a ‘blemish’ that grows, slowly, glints and chinks until her entire body is clearly becoming a vibrant, scintillating piece of stone. She observes herself with fascination and horror, then with enjoyment. She realizes, that she must find a place to be, and she goes in search of places to stand once she is fully immobile. But it becomes apparent that her stony state is not necessarily static; she is becoming a part of another, mineral world. She heads to Iceland, and meets a mythological fate. This tale is full of glittering description, with a compelling analysis of grief and the potential within us for change. Ines’ final fate is decidedly positive, and you will be inspired by her remarkable clarity of focus.
You could, on the other hand, approach your problem by admitting that you are never going to sit with a Dostoyevsky on your knee, and read One Hundred Great Books in Haiku by David Bader, learning one a day until you have a literary canon at your call. Alternatively, you could listen to The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy by Lawrence Sterne on audio (read by Peter Barker) while doing something else with your hands (knitting, ironing, gardening, planning a peaceful revolution). Sterne’s novel is, you could say, the ultimate work of literature based on distraction. The narrator simply cannot keep to his point. Nor could his parents, who, at the very moment of his procreation, inoppotrtunely worried about whether the clock had been wound up, thus scuppering their progeny’s chances for his humours being well balanced, which severely limited any hope of his becoming a well-favored child.
Balance your own humours now, by reading this on your phone, while doing a headstand. Your unreading brain will be so taken up with balancing that you won’t have the brain-cells or limbs spare to take any diversions from the matter in hand.
Ella Berthoud is a bibliotherapist at The School of Life. For more details about the service, please click here.
I just think you haven't found the right book. And (sorry) none of those books look all that interesting. It's also location. Why not read in a nice wi-fi-free cafe? Or go to a local library? There are always a few libraries in a city that boast lovely architecture and goose-neck lamps. Though there are certainly distractions here, there's something calming and meditative about being somewhere public yet completely alone without any electronic devices to vie for your attention.
Sometimes it takes me two years to finish a book and other times three days. Maybe it's less your attention span and more what you are trying to read.
As a completely personal aside, I suggest David Mitchell. He might not be to your liking but I would sometimes miss my subway (also great reading place) stop I was so into his books.
Posted by: Bette | March 01, 2011 at 01:49 PM