Research has shown that skimming while reading in digital media reduces the inclination and perhaps ability to engage in higher level reading, while a lack of higher-level reading practice compromises the efficacy of skimming when reading. Higher-level reading implies critical and conscious reading, slow reading, non-strategic reading and long-form reading, according to Schuller-Zwierlein et al, 2202.  The psychologist, Steven Pinker has argued that we learn empathy by immersing ourselves in other people’s minds through reading.  During a recent weekend break, I immersed myself in Noreen Masud’s beautiful book, ‘a flat place’.  It is a memoir about childhood trauma, patriarchy and colonialism told through stories associated with flatlands outside Lahore, at Orford Ness, the Cambridgeshire fens, Morecambe Bay and Orkney.  I read it while staying in the flat landscape around Dunham Massey between Warrington and Manchester which made the physical topography described by Masud resonate with me.  However, her reflections on her and our psyche were also deeply significant – she opens one chapter with a quote from Laura S Brown’s article, ‘Not Outside the Range: One Feminist Perspective on Psychic Trauma’, which perhaps is core to her story: ‘…the constant presence and threat of trauma in the lives of girls and woman of all colors, men of color…, lesbian and gay people, people in poverty and people with disabilities has shaped our society, a continuing background noise rather than an unusual event’.

Brown LS. Not outside the range: One feminist perspective on psychic trauma. American Imago. 119-33, 1991.

Masud N, a flat place, Hamish Hamilton, 2023

Schüller-Zwierlein A, Mangen A, Kovač M, van der Weel A. Why higher-level reading is important. First Monday. 27(5) Sep 5, 2022.