Read:

Do you read books anymore? I mean real, whole, chapter-by-chapter books? When was the last time you sat down with a book and read for an hour straight, without stopping to check your phone for a text or email, or taking a break to look up something on your tablet?

It turns out that online reading–emails, social media updates, articles, even this blog post–is stunting our ability to maintain our focus long enough to read whole chapters at a time in a book. As Hugh McGuire writes in this Medium article on Why We Can’t Read Anymore, which I love so much I want to quote it for days and weeks until people ask me to please shut up:

It turns out that digital devices and software are finely tuned to train us to pay attention to them, no matter what else we should be doing. The mechanism, borne out by recent neuroscience studies, is something like this:

New information creates a rush of dopamine to the brain, a neurotransmitter that makes you feel good.
The promise of new information compels your brain to seek out that dopamine rush.
With fMRIs, you can see the brain’s pleasure centres light up with activity when new emails arrive.

So, every new email you get gives you a little flood of dopamine. Every little flood of dopamine reinforces your brain’s memory that checking email gives a flood of dopamine. And our brains are programmed to seek out things that will give us little floods of dopamine. Further, these patterns of behaviour start creating neural pathways, so that they become unconscious habits: Work on something important, brain itch, check email, dopamine, refresh, dopamine, check Twitter, dopamine, back to work. Over and over, and each time the habit becomes more ingrained in the actual structures of our brains.

How can books compete?

I love that McGuire is straightforward about confessing how few books he reads, even though he’s dedicated his whole life to the business of books.  I have a sneaking suspicion that other publishing professionals are also reading less books than they’d like to–yes, we read books when we’re editing them, but that’s a distinctly different experience than sitting down to be immersed in a finished book.

Me? I’ve read 2 1/2 books so far this year. I whizzed through The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society and The Roundhouse in March and now am tromping page by page through A Walk in the Woods. Not because it’s not a wonderful book (it is–read it!), but because I get into bed with it and end up checking email or texts or Twitter or Instagram or who the heck knows what else. And before I know it, it’s 10:30 pm–bedtime for this granny.

I was originally going to write today’s post as a link roundup of articles worth reading from the past week. But then I read McGuire’s article and realized that, for once, maybe we would all benefit from some focus. So if you read just one article this week, read this one. It will realign you. And then maybe turn off the TV tonight, leave your phone in the other room, and get into bed with a book and really read it. I know I’ll be trying that tonight!

Eat & Drink:

It’s Mother’s Day weekend! Which means children the country over are panicking about what to cook for mom. Pancakes? (Too messy.) Waffles? (Who even owns a waffle iron!?) Eggs Benedict? (Sure to end with a broken hollandaise and tears.) An omelet? (Well, it won’t look this perfect, so why bother):

Lucky for us, moms are pretty good at loving our food even when it isn’t quite perfect, or even vaguely competent. So here’s what I’m thinking:

Pesto Eggs Benedict:

Recipe and photo from Alimentari.

I think I’ll make it with a thick slice of buttered Italian bread, crispy prosciutto, a slice of fresh mozzarella, and top it with the pesto-drizzled poached egg.

Watermelon, Blackberry, and Mint Fruit Salad:

Recipe and photo from Two Peas and Their Pod.

Simple, fresh, and pretty. What more could you ask for?

Passionfruit and Lychee Mimosa:

Recipe and photo from SheKnows.

For the mother who loves mimosas and anything with lychee in it.

Happy eating to all the mothers!