This post comes to you thanks to Vic. Thanks Vic!

While visiting with Steve and Seanna over the Christmas holidays, Seanna said something that got me thinking. I can’t remember the context (other than that it was in a teasing sense), and I’m sure she doesn’t even remember saying it, but it was something along the lines of, “Well Adina is obviously into instant gratification, she reads comic books.” It’s odd. Although graphic novels do take me less time to read per page I actually find it more difficult to read graphic novels than I do regular novels.

I’m a fast and voracious reader, although less so than before university. Given the time, I race through novels like crazy. This is great most of the time, but sometimes I wish that I could savour a book a little longer before reaching the last page. Once, on a family trip, I forced myself to slow down to a read aloud pace so that I wouldn’t finish my book so quickly. It was an interesting experiment in really experiencing what I was reading but I found it really difficult to resist the urge to speed up.

As Seanna’s comment implied, it’s possible to get through graphic novels really quickly. I could easily race through Daisy Kutter, one of my favourite graphic novels, in less than 15 minutes. When I first started reading graphic novels, that’s exactly what I did. However, when I do that, I miss 3/4 of the story. They are called graphic novels for a reason. In Daisy Kutter, Kazu created some stunning art that deserves to be savoured. When I’m reading it, I have to work hard to resist the old habit of reading as quickly as I can, and slow down to notice the details.

It’s interesting how something that seems like it should be so much easier and faster pushes me into being slow and mindful.

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