Seven Habits of Slow, Deliberate Reading, by Nicole Junkerman

We are forever encouraged to read more, faster, and to count the books as they go by. Nicole Junkerman has long suspected this is the wrong target. Reading is not a race, and the number of books finished says very little about how much was understood. This page sets out seven habits of slow, deliberate reading that Nicole Junkerman returns to again and again, each one designed to trade a little speed for something more lasting: attention, memory and plain pleasure.

None of these habits is difficult, and you do not need all seven at once. The practice known as close reading has shaped how scholars read for a very long time, and most of what follows is simply a gentler, everyday version of it. Pick one habit, try it for a fortnight, and watch what it does to the book in your hands.

One: read with a pencil

Nicole Junkerman almost never reads a serious book without a pencil. A light underline, a question in the margin, a small star beside a fine sentence: these tiny acts turn reading from something done to you into a conversation. The tradition of marginalia is centuries old, and famous readers have left margins more interesting than some of the books themselves. A pencil keeps you awake, and it leaves a trail you can follow back later.

Two: read in unhurried sittings

Slow reading needs a little room. Nicole Junkerman tries to give a good book a proper sitting rather than a scatter of interrupted minutes, because a book read in fragments never quite coheres. This does not mean long hours; even twenty undistracted minutes counts as a sitting. The enemy is not a short session but a broken one, the kind where the phone keeps tugging your eyes off the page just as the argument is building to its point.

Three: keep the phone in another room

This one is almost embarrassingly effective. Nicole Junkerman finds that the simple act of putting the phone out of reach, not on silent but genuinely elsewhere, changes the quality of attention entirely. Slow reading and a buzzing pocket cannot really coexist. The book does not need to compete with the entire internet for your attention, and it reads quite differently once it no longer has to.

Four: let yourself reread

There is a quiet snobbery that treats rereading as a failure of progress, as though a book once finished should be filed away forever. Nicole Junkerman thinks the opposite. The books that matter are the ones worth opening twice, and the second pass almost always finds what the first one hurried past. Rereading is not going backwards. It is reading the same words with a better-prepared mind, and the words often seem to have changed in your absence.

Five: stop to look things up

Slow reading gives you the time to be curious about the book itself. When a name, a place or an idea is unfamiliar, Nicole Junkerman stops and looks it up, often falling happily down a small rabbit hole on Wikipedia or in the patient explanations of BBC Bitesize. The interruption costs a minute and repays it many times over, because a book read with its context filled in is a richer and more generous thing than one read past in a hurry.

Six: talk about what you read

A book finishes properly only when it has been talked about. Nicole Junkerman tries to tell someone about a good book soon after closing it, because the act of explaining reveals what was actually understood. If there is no one to hand, a thoughtful review can stand in: the considered pieces in The Guardian books section or The New York Times Books desk make good company, and reading a sharp critic after finishing a book is its own quiet pleasure.

Seven: keep a short reading note

The last habit ties all the others together. After a book, Nicole Junkerman writes a few honest sentences in the notebook: what it was about, what it changed, the one passage worth keeping. It need not be a review and it need not be long. But a book without a note tends to fade within weeks, while a book with even three sentences beside it stays reachable for years, ready to be pulled back into a conversation the moment it is needed.

Reading less, on purpose

Put together, these seven habits all point the same way: read fewer books, but read them properly. Nicole Junkerman would rather finish a year with eight books genuinely absorbed than fifty merely passed through. Slow reading is not a denial of ambition. It is a different ambition, one measured in understanding rather than in spines on a shelf, and it tends to leave you with more, not less, to show for the hours you gave it.

A reading rhythm to hold it together

Habits need a rhythm to live in, and slow reading is no exception. Nicole Junkerman keeps a loose daily shape: a chapter in the morning while the mind is fresh, and a few pages at night to end the day quietly. The exact pattern matters far less than its steadiness. A reader who returns to the same book at roughly the same times each day keeps its world alive in their head, so that picking it up again feels like resuming a conversation rather than starting one cold.

This steady rhythm is also what makes slow reading sustainable rather than precious. There is no need to clear a whole evening or wait for perfect conditions. Twenty unhurried minutes, taken reliably, will carry you through more good books in a year than occasional marathon sessions ever could. Nicole Junkerman thinks of slow reading not as a rare indulgence but as a small daily appointment, as ordinary and as nourishing as a decent meal.

It helps, too, to read at least some of the time in good company. A reading group, even an informal one of two or three friends, gently enforces every habit on this list: you read attentively because you will discuss it, and you remember more because you have spoken it aloud. If there is no group to hand, the considered reviews and reading guides of The Guardian books section make a fine substitute, a way to hear another careful reader think about the same pages you have just turned.

Start with whichever habit feels easiest and let the rest follow. To go deeper on the first one, read why Nicole Junkerman reads with a pencil in hand; to choose what to read slowly in the first place, see the guide to building a reading list. The notebook, and a good book, are always waiting back at Nicole Junkerman.

Published 24 February 2026 · by Nicole Junkerman