A mindset game

I recently recommended Lyudmila Ulitskaya’s novel and one of the arguments was that it was easy to read, having short chapters. I did not realize the importance of this recommendation until the other day, reading ‘The Book of mirrors’ by Eugen Ovidiu Chirovici (a very-well written novel, which I kindly recommend to you, too. I admit that while reading the book I was expecting for something regarding Romania to come up – I don’t know exactly what; maybe traits of Romanian characters, sights etc. – but it never appeared. Which actually confirms the talent of the writer Eugen Ovidiu Chirovici, who succeeded in being a truly chameleon-writer.). Many of the nowadays novels have short chapters, making it easier for the readers.

Firstly, I must admit that such type of novels give us, the readers, the gift of assimilating the information. I will explain: after every chapter a pause is made; the more chapters there are, the more pauses appear. Thus, we can take a short time to reflect upon what was presented to us and to read further or to take a break. Which leads me to the second argument in favor of this technique.

Nowadays, we are in such struggle with time. Not all of us afford spending hours on reading a book. Thus, by having to read short chapters, we can easily stop from it when we must take care of something else, and mostly, our mind does not become stuck (and a little guilty) for having stopped in the middle of the reading. Actually, the mind feels that it has successfully fulfilled an action and it will come back again, maybe soon, to start another, and not having to finish the one before and thus trying to remember where everything was.
As bizarre as that seems, this really calms the brain. It is like any other activity that gives us a sense of satisfaction because we have successfully fulfilled it. The next activity (actually, a chapter) starts, thus, with new forces, with no guilt regarding the stopping in the middle of things.