The Radical Act of Reading Slowly in a World That Won’t Stop Scrolling

It took me three months to finish Sarah Thornton’s Seven Days in the Art World. Three whole months for a 294-page book. In our swipe-left culture, that feels almost embarrassingly slow.

But here’s what happened during those three months: I didn’t just read that book—I lived with it. I argued with it over coffee. I scribbled notes in the margins until the pages looked like a conspiracy theorist’s wall. I paused mid-chapter to redesign entire aspects of my business. By the time I reached the final page, Thornton’s insights had rewired how I think about art education, critique, and community.

That book didn’t just inform my work—it transformed it. The artist coaching programs I now run? Born from Thornton’s observations about how critique actually functions in MFA programs. The structure of my group sessions? Inspired by her analysis of effective artistic dialogue. The very premise that artists need structured feedback and theoretical grounding? Validated by her research into how successful artists actually develop.

I used Seven Days like a workbook, and it worked.

The Disappearing Art of Deep Reading

When did we decide that consuming information faster was better? Somewhere between the rise of social media and the fall of our collective attention span, we started treating books like content to be consumed rather than ideas to be digested.

I see this constantly in the art world. Artists scroll through Instagram for “inspiration,” skim articles about art trends, and wonder why their practice feels shallow or directionless. They’re drowning in information but starving for insight.

The difference between information and insight is time. Information is what you absorb in thirty seconds of scrolling. Insight is what emerges when you sit with an idea long enough for it to germinate, challenge your assumptions, and connect with other concepts you’ve been wrestling with.

Why Creatives Need to Become Better Consumers

We’ve created a culture obsessed with output. Every artist needs a social media presence. Every creative must build their brand. Platform, platform, platform. But what about input? What about the radical act of shutting up long enough to learn something?

The most interesting artists I know are voracious readers. Not of art magazines (though those have their place), but of books that challenge how they think. Philosophy. Science. History. Literature. They understand that creativity isn’t just about expressing what’s already inside you—it’s about expanding what’s inside you to begin with.

When you read deeply, you’re not just gathering material for your next project. You’re rewiring your brain’s pattern recognition system. You’re building a more sophisticated internal database of ideas, connections, and possibilities.

The Slow Reading Manifesto

Reading slowly isn’t about being a slow reader—it’s about reading with intention. It’s about giving ideas the time they need to take root.

Here’s what slow reading actually looks like:

You argue with the author. Good books should provoke disagreement. I spent weeks debating Thornton’s analysis of auction houses because it forced me to examine my own assumptions about art valuation.

You pause to think. When an idea stops you in your tracks, you stop. You don’t soldier through to hit your daily page quota. You sit with the discomfort of having your worldview challenged.

You make connections. Slow reading is associative. That passage about art criticism connects to something you read three years ago, which relates to a conversation you had last week, which suddenly illuminates a problem you’ve been trying to solve.

You apply what you learn. The best books become instruction manuals for better thinking. I kept a running document of how Thornton’s insights could improve my artist mentorship programs. By the end, I had a blueprint for entirely new services.

Why Your Practice Needs Books (Real Ones)

Social media posts give you reactions. Articles give you information. But books give you frameworks—systematic ways of thinking that you can apply across multiple situations.

When I work with artists in my coaching programs, the ones who make the fastest progress are invariably readers. They have richer vocabularies for discussing their work. They can contextualize their practice within broader cultural conversations. They’re not just making art—they’re participating in the ongoing dialogue about what art can be and do.

This isn’t about becoming an academic. It’s about becoming a more thoughtful practitioner. Whether you’re developing your artistic voice, curating exhibitions, or simply trying to understand why certain artworks affect you, books provide the depth that fragments of online content simply can’t match.

The Compound Interest of Ideas

Here’s the thing about slow reading: the benefits are cumulative. Each book you really digest doesn’t just add to your knowledge—it multiplies it. Ideas from different sources start cross-pollinating in unexpected ways.

Thornton’s analysis of art education informed my understanding of effective critique, which influenced how I structure feedback sessions, which improved outcomes for the artists I work with, which led to new insights about artistic development, which will inform my next program design.

That’s the compound interest of deep reading at work.

Making Time for Depth

“I don’t have time to read books” is the creativity killer of our era. You have time for three hours of social media scrolling, but not for thirty minutes with a book? The truth is, we’ve trained ourselves to crave the dopamine hit of constant stimulation.

Reading requires a different kind of mental muscle—one that most of us have allowed to atrophy. But like any muscle, it can be rebuilt.

Start small. Twenty pages before bed. One chapter over morning coffee. The goal isn’t speed—it’s consistency and depth.

The Takeaway

In our rush to produce, share, and platform ourselves, we’ve forgotten that creativity is also about receiving. About allowing other minds to challenge, inspire, and expand our own thinking.

The artists who consistently create work that matters aren’t just good at expressing their ideas—they’re good at growing their ideas. And that growth happens in the quiet spaces between pages, where insights have room to breathe and take root.

So yes, keep posting. Keep creating. Keep building your practice. But also keep reading. Real books. Slowly. With intention.

Your future work will thank you for it.