A book is not information. A book is a room. To read well is to enter and stay long enough for the room to change us — a slow work, undertaken again and again.
We have taught ourselves to skim, to gather, to move on. But there are texts that will not yield to speed. They open only under attention, the way certain flowers open only to a particular light.
The old practice of lectio — reading, meditating, praying, resting — knew this. It was less a method than a manner: an unhurried love for what was said, and for the one who said it.