Back to A small shelfBook review · 2026
BOOK · COVER
PRIOR
On Reading Well
Karen Swallow Prior
A defence of slow reading, written slowly. Prior takes one virtue and one novel at a time and refuses to hurry either. Best read in the way it argues for.
The structure is simple enough to describe in a sentence: twelve virtues, twelve books, one chapter each. The execution is harder than that sounds, because Prior will not let a novel become a worked example. The book stays a book; the virtue has to come and find it.
Her method is worth stealing. She reads closely, quotes generously, and resists the summary — the thing most of us reach for when we are reading to finish rather than reading to read.
It is the rare book about reading that leaves you slower rather than more efficient, and is right to.