reading while walking

Even if you subscribe to all the usual pieties about the benefits of reading, you have to admit that the physical act of reading, when considered by itself, is stultifying. There you are, sedentary and immobile, your attention fixated into a hinged accretion of quadrangular paper layers, straining your eyes while your muscles turn into mush. If you indulge in the habit for too long, you end up resembling one of H. G. Wells' martians: a pale, big-headed monstrosity with atrophied limbs.

It would be much better to read while performing some physical activity that plunged you back into the world, like walking... a nice blend of mental and physical exertion, a compromise between engaging the text and engaging your actual surroundings. It would involve some dangers, though, like not being able to concentrate enough on the book, or concentrating too much and wandering in front of a moving truck.

But, why not just turn to audiobooks instead, one might ask. Well, audiobooks are great, but listening to them is not exactly reading. If you want random access, or simply to find and re-read some previous passage, they are cumbersome. Plus, when wandering through noisy environments you would have to either cram up the volume—damaging your ears—or isolate yourself from external sounds—which, of course, is another way of not engaging with the world.

I, for one, have convinced myself! I will presently take a walk around the port of A Coruña, a pocket French grammar in hand. If I do not post again, assume I fell off the pier while rehearsing the irregular verbs.