THE SLOW BOOK MOVEMENT

The Slow Book Movement is modeled after the Slow Food Movement, which was founded in Italy by Carlo Petrini in 1989. Mr. Petrini wanted to encourage taking time to appreciate both the preparation of meals and the dining experience. This movement now has a total membership over 100,000, including 16,000 members in the USA.

The Slow Book Movement, founded in an upstate New York farmhouse in November, 2009, aims to inspire a reawakening to the act of reading. As we enter an era with more and more people “reading” books on digital screens, getting news headlines online, escaping through the flat screen at home, the time is ripe for people to be reminded, or introduced for the first time, to the joys of reading. The Slow Book Movement is beginning in America for the same reason its counterpart originated in Italy. The United States is to literature as Italy is to food. This nation gave us Faulkner and Steinbeck and Vonnegut, Irving and Kingsolver. And great stories come out every single day, tales spun to be savored, descriptions to be reveled in, plot twists to follow diligently, characters to get to know and understand.