The Languorous Reader: mindful reading as an exercise in openness and reflection

“As criticism is an art of love, its prevailing mood is languor. Would it were languorous and loving more often, especially in its more ideological mode, where its typical will to mastery over a work of art, its imperative to expose and demystify, to intervene and interrogate, loses most, ironically, in the firmness of its grasp, the unsentimentally of its aim, and the devastation of its hit.” (Hanson, 2012)

To read is to learn, so we’re told in schools. As children, we are forced into allocated reading time, told what to read and our ability to read is graded by a number or letter. From an early age, reading is treated as a competition. Who can read the most sophisticated words or who’s at a high level for their age? We are examined and tested based on who can read the best and we are brainwashed into the reading the same books continually until we have passed these exams. As we get older, we learn to critique, to connect, to expand our minds. To make choices about what we are exposed to and what we want to read. Our experiences shape our approaches to reading and how we interpret them.

I wrote a short piece on the pleasure of reading, where I explored my favourite books following a very unproductive clear out of my books (by unproductive, I mean I cleared my shelves to look at my books and kept all of them!). During that time, I reflected on what I had read and how that had developed as I aged and gained life experience. I was taught to approach with suspicion, to appreciate the craft, to read languorously but also to critique and reflect.

In The Languorous Critic, the “"hermeneutics of suspicion," as Paul Ricoeur disarmingly described it, keeps the work of art under strict surveillance as if it were an adversary calculating our betrayal. From this perspective, to love art is to risk being naïve, delusional, narcissistic, fatuous, or effete, thereby disowning the will to cognitive mastery deemed essential to critique. In her effort to define a more "reparative" alternative, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick has noted the circular reasoning and narrow range of negative effects that characterize what she calls "paranoid reading."” (Hanson, 2012). The hermeneutics of suspicion is a term to describe the practice of reading texts against what is the social norm to expose their repressed or hidden meanings. This gives us the skillset to reflect and develop thoughts or feelings based on what we experience through the hermeneutics of suspicion. It discusses the art of languorous reading, reflecting how to read mindfully. This is something that comes quite difficult to adults in some sense.

To read languorously is to read with the intention of being relaxed or listless – to read for pleasure without particular purpose. According to Collins dictionary, “If you describe an activity as languorous, you mean that it is lazy, relaxed, and not energetic, usually in a pleasant way. (Collins, 2026). This is something that in the busy working world, is often treated poorly.

In the age of productivity, we are conditioned to only do things that have a purpose, so slow reading is often treated as unproductive.

However, what I learnt through the exercise is the power of slow reading. The impact that reading languorously is so important. The benefits on reflective thinking and mental wellness are huge. On Goodreads, there’s an initiative called the ‘reading challenge’ where people set targets of the number of books finished per year. I have taken part in this initiative, and it sets unnecessary pressure and competition between readers. This takes away the pleasure of reading and forces people into reading to finish rather than reading to learn or reflect. This brings the purpose of reading back to how we read in school. It isn’t about reflection, but about being productive and reaching a goal. However, by actively participating in slow reading, we can appreciate and absorb every word and idea, we can have an immersive reading experience and savour every moment. We can develop thoughts and reflect. This can have several benefits on our health and wellbeing.

“Scientists at the University of Cambridge have joined with The Queen’s Reading Room – the charity founded by Her Majesty The Queen – to highlight the benefits of reading for pleasure at any age as part of the National Year of Reading.” (Cambridge University, 2025); this study has shown that reading decreases the risk of mental health conditions such as dementia.

Professor Barbara Sahakian from Cambridge University says that reading “is a great way to support our brain health, develop important cognitive skills and boost our wellbeing. It’s something we ought to be encouraging from an early age, given the increasing evidence of its benefits, particularly to children, but really, it’s never too late to start, and it can bring benefits throughout our lives and into old age.” (Sahakian, 2025) and these benefits have been reported to be: better attention, memory and executive functioning, greater academic achievement, fewer mental health problems, and healthier lifestyles (including more sleep and less screen time).

This study wasn’t just about reading for purpose; this is about reading for pleasure and absorbing information for the joy of it rather than for productivity. For learning about the world and those around us. Reading slowly allows you to consume information and retain in, rather that understanding enough to commit to short term memory to reach a goal.

Reflecting on my own journey, I have experienced reading for pleasure and reading for purpose and I often find I can talk more about the books I read for pleasure, and I read more enthusiastically, giving me more motivation to complete each book with languor. I reflected on my reading journey, particularly when I began university, starting with the freedom for pleasurable reading. “I pushed the boundaries in terms of my reading and exploring new ideas. I recently read "The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo" by Taylor Jenkins Reid, a historical fiction that explores gender and sexuality in a way that I had never considered. It’s not a book that I would have read before, the romance novels I had read had been entirely heterosexual and left no room for tragedy but allowing myself to read something slightly different allowed me to push my ideas further. Beginning to read a wider array of sub-genres allowed me to become more thoughtful with contemporary ideas within my academic writing.” (Baker-Phillips, 2023). In this activity, I learnt about my own identity, developed my thoughts and reflected on my personal development; this is steps that I may have not made to learn about myself without it. This significantly aided my mental health and therefore I have experienced the benefits of reading mindfully in this way. I have understood the impact of reflective thinking which is enabled by languorous reading.

This is something I recommend for everyone to do – you don’t have to read a lot; you don’t even have to pick up a book – just try reading something you enjoy. It could be a news article, a short story, a poem or even the lyrics to a song. Just forget about the world for a few minutes and let the words fill your mind. Let your thoughts wander, let your mind be free. Just see what happens. I did, and I have never felt more alive!