Announcing My First Pick for the HuffPost Book Club: In Praise of Slowness

Before I announce my first pick for "Arianna's Reading" (aka the HuffPost Book Club), I want to talk a little bit about how I will -- and will not -- be making my choices. I'm not going to pick a book simply because it's the It Book of the moment that everyone is talking about or because some juicy or controversial excerpt is making news or because it's just been published. Instead, I'm going to pick the books that captivate and excite me, that make me want to run out and buy multiple copies to give to my friends. The books that make me pull out my pen and start underlining and writing in the margins (yes, I'm one of those readers!).

One time it might be a new release by an up-and-coming author, the next it might be a classic, like some of those chosen by our editors as a book that changed their life. It could be a novel, a nonfiction book on politics or spirituality, a biography -- or even the occasional guilty pleasure.

The main question is: does it make me want to start a conversation about it? Because your thoughts, feedback, ideas, reactions, agreements and disagreements are a key part of our HuffPost Book Club. I absolutely want to hear what you think of the books I choose -- and I want to hear your suggestions for other books we should be featuring.

At HuffPost, we passionately embrace the rapid-fire, always-fresh, up-to-the-second, 24/7 nature of online news. But here at HuffPost Books, the pace will be different. A little bit slower, a little more willing to look back as well as ahead. A little more willing to kick back and curl up with a good book.

Which brings me to my first "Arianna's Reading" selection: it not only fits the "book you want to curl up with" bill, its message has influenced the way I'll be making my picks.

I'm reading (actually re-reading) and would love you all to read In Praise of Slowness: Challenging the Cult of Speed, a terrific book by Carl Honore, published by HarperOne in 2004, in which a self-professed "speedaholic" advocates the need for a more balanced existence.

"Speed can be fun, productive and powerful, and we would be poorer without it," writes Honore. "What the world needs, and what the slow movement offers, is a middle path, a recipe for marrying la dolce vita with the dynamism of the information age. The secret is balance: instead of doing everything faster, do everything at the right speed. Sometimes fast. Sometimes slow. Sometimes in between."

In the opening chapter, Honore, a Canadian-born journalist living in London, writes about the turning point that led him to become one of the godfathers of the (not so slowly) burgeoning slow movement. Nearly ten years ago, Honore was at the airport in Rome, waiting for his flight home, and talking to his editor on his cell phone. Like far too many of us, he says, at the time he was wired and harried, a "Scrooge with a stopwatch, obsessed with saving every last scrap of time, a minute here, a few seconds there."

As such, while on line and on the phone, to make his time even more "productive," he started skimming a newspaper. A headline caught his eye: "The One-Minute Bedtime Story." The article was about a volume in which classic children's books are condensed down to 60 seconds. Eureka, he thought to himself. As the father of a two-year-old, he saw the book as a great bedtime time-saver. As he started making a mental note to order the book as soon as he got home, he suddenly found himself thinking: "Have I gone completely insane?"

"Standing in that lineup," writes Honore, "I begin to grapple with the questions that lie at the heart of this book: Why are we always in such a rush? What is the cure for time-sickness? Is it possible, or even desirable, to slow down?"

Luckily for all of is, the answers are: yes it is possible, and yes it is desirable. And Honore has done a terrific job of showing the way.

I came to the book through a Eureka moment of my own. A couple of years ago, exhausted from working too much and eating and sleeping too little, I fainted, hit my head on my desk, broke my cheekbone, and ended up with five stitches over one eye. Determined to find some balance in my life, I took Honore's book with me on a trip to Greece.

The deeper I got into the book, the more I realized that I had had a towering example of the joys and benefits of slowness right in front of me for most of my life: my mother.

As I wrote in a column shortly after her death in 2000, she and I had an unspoken deal: hers would be the rhythm of a timeless world, a child's rhythm; mine was the rhythm of the modern world. While I had the sense every time I looked at my watch that it was later than I thought, she lived in a world where there were no impersonal encounters, and never a need to rush.

"The last time my mother was upset with me," I wrote, "was when she saw me talking with my children and opening my mail at the same time. She despised multi-tasking. She believed it was a way to miss life, to miss the gifts that come only when you give 100 percent of yourself to a task, a relationship, a moment."

And yet, in the years since her passing, I'd grown farther and farther away from the lesson that was her greatest gift. Reading Honore's book in Greece rekindled her spirit for me.

This is not to say that adopting slowness is easy. It's definitely not. And I recommend the book not because I've mastered it, but because I need its message reinforced. In other words, it turns out that, not surprisingly, slowness can't be mastered quickly.

One of the things I especially love about In Praise of Slowness is Honore's tone throughout. Far from a lifestyle guru who's preaching his enlightenment from on high, Honore himself is a pilgrim, trying to learn how to slow down and enjoy the journey. He takes us along for the ride while he travels the world, learning what novelist Milan Kundera called "the wisdom of slowness" and how it can enrich virtually every part of our lives.

We now have the Slow Food movement, which started in Italy and at this point boasts nearly 100,000 members. It emphasizes local food, sustainable agriculture, and taking time to enjoy not just eating meals but preparing them. We also have the Slow Sex movement, teaching Inner Slowness through meditation, the study of Slow Cities, etc, etc. And there is a lot the slow movement can teach us about how we bring up and educate our children.

Honore not only articulates the philosophical underpinnings of the slow movement, he also provides specific examples of how to incorporate it into our lives through such things as the directionless ramble, naps, and meditation.

Honore is not some easy-to-dismiss Luddite who wants you to throw your BlackBerry in the river. "This is not a declaration of war against speed," he explains. "Speed has helped remake our world in ways that are wonderful and liberating." But it can also become "a kind of idolatry."

Even though the main theme of the book is our day-to-day personal obsession with time, rereading the book this week I was struck by how much it also had to say about our financial crisis and the rethinking occasioned by the collapse of free-market fundamentalism.

"Modern capitalism generates extraordinary wealth," he writes, "but at the cost of devouring natural resources faster than Mother Nature can replace them. Capitalism is getting too fast even for its own good, as the pressure to finish first leaves too little time for quality control."

Under what Honore calls "turbo capitalism," people exist "to serve the economy, rather than the other way around."

So not only can we as individuals profit from the benefits of slowness, so, too, can our culture -- and our economy.

Please join me in reading -- or rereading -- In Praise of Slowness (And don't miss Carl Honore's blog post reacting to our picking it). And let me know what you think. Let's get the conversation going.

Get your copy of Carl Honore's In Praise of Slowness at Amazon.com or at IndieBound.

 

Follow Arianna Huffington on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ariannahuff

Comments

[Brooks Palmer]

Hi Arianna,

Thanks for picking a book about slowness. I like the subject. It's the opposite of crazybusy. I was inspired by your story of how you fell and hurt yourself and the things you did to help yourself.

I wrote a book which you might be interested to read that's a similar subject matter. It's called, "Clutter Busting: Letting Go of What's Holding You Back." It's about letting go of the things in our lives that are no longer serving us. It's put out by New World Library.

Thanks again!
Brooks

[racetoinfinity]

Look likes a great choice - and in the same vein as SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL by E.M. Schumacher and ZEN AND THE ART OF M.M. - by Pirsig (maybe not as luminously mystical as this last one?). Will put on my list. Thanks.

[MosesMa]

Arianna, I'm the editor of the Tantric News, an online publication about spiritualizing sexuality, finding the joy of the present moment, and engaged tantra. We're all about slowing down sex, and food, and life in general. Come by sometime and check it out. Thanks! Moses - Editor/www.tantricnews.com

[SILVANUS]

This comment is pending approval and won't be displayed until it is approved.

Reading the book dovertailed with my own change in consciousness, after years of being attached to big cities and the glamour of fast living.

I'm not anti-tech, but I wince everytime I see people yammering on cell phones while driving or consulting a Blackberry every time I say something or newsbyte trails by. I know the species grows in bursts and acts childish during those phases, and certain progress is made in small ways, but a lot of life is missed. Consider the true cliche of 500 channels and nothing on to watch. Well, it's pretty accurate, really. We have all these "babysitters for the mind", I call them. Which is OK. But why do people need to put something in every hole at once?

To escape the responsibilities of their own being, perhaps? To fill the silence of which media has well-trained them to fear?

Trance states abound.

[SILVANUS]

Reading the book dovertailed with my own change in consciousness, after years of being attached to big cities and the glamour of fast living.

I'm not anti-tech, but I wince everytime I see people yammering on cell phones while driving or consulting a Blackberry every time I say something or newsbyte trails by. I know the species grows in bursts and acts childish during those phases, and certain progress is made in small ways, but a lot of life is missed. Consider the true cliche of 500 channels and nothing on to watch. Well, it's pretty accurate, really. We have all these "babysitters for the mind", I call them. Which is OK. But why do people need to put something in every hole at once?

To escape the responsibilities of their own being, perhaps? To fill the silence of which media has well-trained them to fear?

Trance states abound.

[ohmemercylard]

i agree with everything you say. i struggle with making the conscious effort to only do one thing, to turn off extraneous distractions, to transcend that age-old fear that I might be missing something. Actually, trying to keep up with everything causes one to miss pretty much everything, as it all flies by.

Go out in the woods and listen to the quiet. You'll feel better.

[jocelynrapp]

Great book, I read it a couple years ago. I felt that the way it was put together was questionable, but all together this man preaches my mantra.

[Terry9933]

Alice in Wonderland Trying to Peer Past the Mirror
to the Land of Entropy-Backwards

As Lewis Caroll said
"The hurrier you go .....
The behinder you get"
So why be in a hurry?

Entropy rules the land we live and die in
Syntropy rules the sacred grave we renew in
Living and Death/Rebirthing in two different places
We eventually get the hang of it after many incarnations

Learn to go slow and live/die with grace
Lingering at a slow more careful pace
Then in the land of Death/Rebirth on the other side
We may linger longer between earth lives

So I try to walk slow down the road to the tomb
Then Death/Rebirth slow and deep on my way to the womb
Gently travelling with many a rest
Needing the living-only-to-die less and less

Eventually Living/Dea­th-Rebirth­ing at once and with a bow
Which happens in the land of the Eternal Now
There where nothing ever turns to dust and strife
Entropy-backwards will give me ETERNAL LIFE!

[racetoinfinity]

The still point of the turning Universe. This here empty timeless spaceless eternal plentitde-ful moment.

[aview999]

Just finished reading "un-Spun - finding facts in a world of disinformation" by Brooks Jackson and Kathleen Hall Jamieson (guest of Bill Moyers alot)
I think this book should be REQUIRED READING in all highschools. We need to break the cycle of believing everything the MSM and even the Internet puts out there as FACT. It shows how to "cut through the haze of biased media reportage tbe a savvier consumer and a better informed citizen."
It's a quick read...I didnt put it down once!
http://www.factcheck.org/unspun/

[allwrite]

It is time for all to start living a life that planetary resources can accommodate. I hope Arianna stays on this topic and promotes it aggressively, because when Arianna talks, people listen.

[Ankle]

Efficiency, not speed; making your efforts more effective rather than rapid or more active.

[Wakemewhenitsallover]

I would love to know if we are actually getting any more (useful) work done in our speeded up world. In my first job after graduation in 1984, in London, there was one computer standing proudly in the whole office and we used telex machines to communicate overseas. Not until my third job a few years later did I have a computer on my desk. Communication was by snail mail, telephone, and courier for urgent documents. I spent most of the '90s enjoying a slow life having babies and rejoined the workforce in 2000 to the world of emails and instant response. Due to the gap between these two periods and now working in a different environment, I cannot make any useful comparison. Has anyone noticed greater productivity as a result of technology? I wonder if we are actually achieving more.

[blood1]

Good choice! If we took the time to actually think instead of just reacting, even our blog postings would be more than name calling, which is amusing at first, then they become boring.

As a recent retiree, I have found that the biggest surprise and pleasure is that I now have time to THINK!

Good luck to those who can't live without a mobile device and don't know how to turn it off...just a little razing!

[wmholt]

I'm all about "slowness", however, I'm afraid that in the U.S., it is becoming more of a romantic notion, rather than a viable life choice. I envy the Europeans who know how to take it slow, and enjoy life.

I really enjoy watching the Tour de France each year on cable - the expanse of open countryside and mountain scenery has me longing for such things in the U.S., but we would have put up McDonald's and strip malls in every green square inch if we had the chance.

There's more to life than money. In fact, pursuing money in the U.S. means that we have no real life, just a series of blurred calendar weeks and weekends, trying to meet the next deadline...

[Ventoi]

The Island Of The Blue Dolphins

[wagadog]

I *loved* Island of the Blue Dolphins! Thanks!

[Ventoi]

The Guns of Navarone