About Reading
I should warn you – I’m going to use a few complex terms here, but I promise that in return – I’ll share an idea to brilliantly enhance your reading pleasure.
Let’s start with something many people have come to love: “immersive reading”. Although it sounds quite academic, it simply involves listening to an audiobook while simultaneously following the text in a printed or digital format. In other words, we engage both sight and hearing at the same time. Does it make sense? Perhaps not for everyone, but for many, it can be the most revolutionary change they’ve ever introduced to their reading habits.
The Pros:
- By shutting out the world with headphones and focusing our eyes on the text, we achieve much better concentration and often deeper relaxation. This is something people who are easily distracted or whose minds drift toward tomorrow’s to-do list will truly appreciate.
- Those who aren’t particularly fast readers praise this method because it speeds up the process of “consuming” a book; the narrator maintains a steady pace and there’s no temptation to keep re-reading the previous paragraph. (Note: this same point might be a ‘con’ for speed-readers, as the narrator may feel too slow for them.)
- We experience heightened emotions because the narrator adds elements of pacing and vocal inflection.
- The educational aspect: if you’re reading and listening in a language you’re trying to master, you get the spelling and the pronunciation all at once – brilliant! I highly recommend it. I’ve used this method myself for Italian and I am currently doing so with French.
The Cons:
- Double the cost, unless you have access to ebooks and audiobooks through a subscription service.
- As mentioned, it can slow down those who usually devour texts at high speed.
- Some find it difficult with highly emotional books because the narrator’s delivery might be grating – too much shouting or high-pitched tones. It’s always worth checking a sample of the narrator’s work first.
However, I’d like to highly recommend something else with an even more intriguing name – multisensory reading, or more simply, ‘atmospheric reading’.
What does this mean? It means finding a way to engage not just sight, but also hearing (easy), smell (depends), and touch (usually the trickiest, but sometimes you just need to get creative).
Let me give you an example from my time reading Polish historical novel, about 19th century, much of which is set in Istanbul.
- Sound: You could have music related to that specific time and place in your headphones. But for Istanbul, there’s something even better; on YouTube, you can find ‘soundscapes’ of the city: the bustle of a bazaar, snippets of conversation, the clatter of hooves on cobblestones, the sound of falling rain, the distant call of a muezzin, or fragments of music. Look for things like ‘Ottoman Istanbul Ambience’.
- Smell: This one is easy – the scent of oriental spices and coffee is simple to recreate at home, and you get to enjoy a nice drink at the same time, adding the sense of taste. Alternatively, there are always candles.
- Touch: This is where we get a bit more creative. For Istanbul, soft cushions, rich fabrics, and silks complement the theme perfectly. I admit this point is usually the hardest to include, but you can always take a more metaphorical approach.
Now, the question is – why? Can’t I just sit down and read? Of course you can! However, organising a long evening of multisensory reading is a wonderful adventure. And a quick tip: if you read aloud with children, they will treat this invitation to experience a story with all their senses like the best adventure ever. But it does us adults a world of good too. Why?
The Benefits of Multisensory Reading:
- Deep relaxation – we literally immerse ourselves in the world of the novel through every sense.
- Neuroplasticity – engaging multiple senses simultaneously creates a denser network of neural connections in the brain by linking visual, auditory, and tactile stimuli. In the long term, this can help slow cognitive ageing, and in the short term, it significantly improves memory retention.
- Following on from that – you likely won’t forget a novel read this way for a very long time. You might find that the smell of coffee is forever linked to that specific book and its plot.
- Studies show that reading itself helps reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety. In the case of multisensory reading, this reduction becomes even more significant.
- The final benefit is perhaps the most practical: you travel to incredible places and times without leaving your home, allowing yourself to feel, touch, and hear them. During the COVID lockdowns and the resulting digital overload (remote work, remote school, remote socialising), many people saved their mental health through reading – specifically immersive or multisensory reading.
The Cons? I haven’t found any, other than the fact that you need to set aside at least an hour or more of undisturbed time. And, of course, you need a moment to prepare the sensory environment. But it is well worth it.
Can you prepare such a ‘multisensory package’ for every book? In my opinion, for most books with a pleasant or neutral setting – even a fictional one – if there are clues, then yes. It pleasantly heightens the experience. If you’re reading something ‘macabre’… well, you could, but we don’t necessarily want to amplify the grisly details. In those cases, it’s best to stick to immersive reading.
Aga J. Mackiewicz
for Intensive Chapters
A human, not artificial intelligence, is always responsible for the substantive content and final form of all texts on this website. No text is the result of any advertising partnership. All content represents our own, sometimes subjective, opinions, and no payment has ever influenced them. Photos used in the posts are our own, while graphics are created with the help of AI tools.