Reading Deeply: Rethinking How and Why We Read

In this installment of “Modern Idols,” Luke Hawley, Rose Postma, and Dr. Leah Zuidema discuss Deep Reading: Practices to Subvert the Vices of Our Distracted, Hostile, and Consumeristic Age.

Rooted in pedagogy and deep reading theory, the book is written with academic settings in mind. However, Hawley, Postma, and Zuidema also pointed out several practical strategies for wider audiences to combat distraction and the habit of reading as mere consumption. Their conversation blends big-picture reflection with everyday application, offering ideas for how we might read with more focus, curiosity, and care.

What follows is an edited version of that conversation, highlighting some of those takeaways.

Luke Hawley: To start, I kept thinking about the idea of “chronological snobbery” — the sense that we understand the world better than people did 100 years ago. That’s what I assumed the book was addressing at first: our tendency to look back with a kind of superiority, as if we’ve reached some intellectual pinnacle. But then I started thinking about the opposite version, too — the idea that everything worth knowing was already said by Homer, and the last 50 years are basically cultural decline. That’s obviously an exaggeration, but there’s real tension between those two extremes. How do you move past that? How do you avoid chronological snobbery?

Rose Postma: This book invited me to broaden my reading, and I appreciated that. It challenged me to resist the pendulum swing: on one end, relying solely on the canon; on the other, focusing only on recently published work that feels more immediately relevant or socially engaged. Holding that tension of on-going reflection was a good challenge. It made me consider what I read and prioritize.

Leah Zuidema: I appreciated the authors’ suggestion to pair texts from the same era that engage with each other. It reminded me of the conversations I saw unfold during my time of leadership in the National Council of Teachers of English — the tension around who gets to write what, whose voice is “authentic.” There’s been some loosening around those debates recently, which I think is healthy. And I appreciated the reminder that the texts are there, but so are other voices — and we shouldn’t treat the past as a monolith, or a naive kind of monolith.

Rose Postma: I think it’s always helpful to read texts that disagree with each other. In class, I like to show students a Gillette ad on masculinity and then assign two Christian writers who respond to it in totally different ways. Students are used to thinking that if it’s a Christian voice, it must be right. This forces them to dig deeper — to evaluate the content for themselves. What do they see? What do they think?

I’m always looking for tools to give students that will help them engage deeply and reflectively. But there’s an underlying Marxist question here — what’s the use value of a text? And that’s not a bad question. I appreciated the reminder that sometimes the use value is simply that the text is beautiful. That helped me reopen my own reading list.

Luke Hawley: Teaching English can make you a kind of unhealthy consumer. My dad and I started reading through the last 100 years of Pulitzer winners. He went to obscure libraries to find some of the older ones, and he actually finished the list. I got partway through and realized I was reading just to say I’d read the next one. Not for delight, just for the sake of completion.

Rose Postma: I appreciated early in the book when the authors said this isn’t a text about what to read, but how to read.

Have you ever used companion materials? I’m reading Dante’s Inferno very slowly, and I listen to the Walking with Dante podcast alongside it. It makes a huge difference. I used to come into class expecting students to be able to just pick up a text and read it, but I don’t even do that. I might listen to a podcast or find an expert to talk to. So, I’m trying to be more intentional with students about finding tools, such as podcasts or audiobooks, to do the same.

Leah Zuidema: There’s this interesting disconnect I’ve noticed: the same adults who say, “Students shouldn’t use audiobooks—it’s too easy, it’s cheating, it’s a crutch,” are the ones who’ll later say, “Oh, I can’t listen to audiobooks—I can’t stay focused that long.”

It reveals a deeper assumption—that reading is just decoding text on a page. But if you’re listening, especially to something complex such as a nonfiction argument or fiction with shifting characters, you still have to construct meaning, hold that thread in your head, and make connections. That’s a cognitive and interpretive act.

Rose Postma: It seems like students often assume audiobooks are only for those with documented accommodations, but that’s not the case. Any student can use one, but we still have to actively encourage it.

It’s such a shift from when I was a student. My daughter, for example, will go back and forth between the print and audio versions of a novel she’s reading for school. That kind of flexible literacy wasn’t ingrained in me at that age. It’s a different world now, but our students don’t always feel like using those tools is “allowed.”

Luke Hawley: There’s a section in the book about reading in a digital world that resonates with that concept.

Rose Postma: That’s true. For a long time, teachers often required students to bring the same edition of a book—the exact ISBN, the print copy, the same page numbers. I felt convicted reading that. On the one hand, I get it. There’s a practical need for shared reference points in class. On the other hand, I’ve moved toward being more open in this regard instead of gatekeeping access. For students who are already resistant to reading, what barriers am I unintentionally maintaining? I don’t have answers yet, but it’s something I’m reflecting on this summer.

Luke Hawley: This book also made me think about the canon—what we assume students know. A few years ago, in a contemporary lit class, I mentioned the idea of the modern canon and realized some of my English majors weren’t even familiar with the term. That was wild to me. But maybe there’s something to that. Maybe we should ask students, “What is the canon of your culture?” Regardless of genre or medium, what’s essential reading—or watching or listening—today? That might crash and burn as an assignment, but it feels worth trying, especially as our shared cultural touchpoints become more fragmented.

Chuck Klosterman has this great essay where he says The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson was the last truly shared American experience. After that, you picked between Letterman or Leno. Now, everyone’s got their own personalized feed.

It’s kind of the same with reading, right? If it doesn’t fit your feed, or if it requires more work, you’ll just scroll on by. That sort of fragmented, selective reading makes shared cultural experiences and understanding harder to come by.

Leah Zuidema: That reminds me of another pretty prominent point in the book about distraction, and that really resonated with me. Especially after COVID, I’ve heard so many people say, “I had more time, but I read less,” and I’ve felt that as well. It makes me wonder what’s really going on there. Why do we read? What do we hope for in our reading lives?

Rose Postma:
So, what do you do in your own reading lives to combat the distractions?

Leah Zuidema: When it’s really bad, I’ll set rules. No phone in the room, or I have to read for a set amount of time before doing anything else. Sometimes I find that I have to be intentional about quieting the noise long enough to sink into reading.

Rose Postma: I once heard about a woman who has a rule that she won’t go more than 36 hours between finishing one book and starting another. I don’t follow that exactly, but I do try to have the next book lined up. It’s part of keeping the reading practice alive. I find it’s much harder to get back into reading if I’m not intentional about keeping it part of my daily life, and that’s something the book mentioned, too.

Luke Hawley: Early on in my time teaching literature, I made my students read everything. Like, a whole survey of the history of literature. Because I thought that was the point. But I’ve started focusing more on re-reading.

I think helping students recognize that returning to a text helps with deep reading, and you might notice things you didn’t see before, too.

Rose Posta: I also got a reading chair. It became clear to me that I needed a reading place. Not a place situated in front of the TV. When I sit there, it's not my workplace, and it's not my parenting place. It’s my reading place.

Luke Hawley: It’s interesting how often students report back that they try to do their reading assignments in their rooms with their roommates around. It makes sense, but I think they need that awareness, too.

Leah Zuidema: Perhaps that’s something to do early on in the semester with students, helping them identify a reading place.

Rose Postma: I do a lot of metacognitive work with students—tracking where and how they read. I want them to identify their best environment for academic pursuits, including reading. So many of them default to having the TV on in the background.

Luke Hawley: The authors referred to that as ambient viewing. That’s how our students have learned to study. They think they’re able to multitask, but I think they’re fooling themselves. I continue to tell myself I’m a multitasker, but I know I’m wrong.

Leah Zuidema: I think that’s true for many of us. So much of the content we take in now is fast and fragmented. Though it’s becoming uncommon, deep reading—or viewing or listening—remains crucial for truly connecting with what we take in.

In today’s distracted world, deep reading requires conscious effort. We hope this discussion encourages you to find your own ways to engage meaningfully, turning passive and fragmented consumption into thoughtful engagement.