What's the hurry?

• Author: DiNovella, Elizabeth
• Position: In Praise of Slowness: How a Worldwide Movement Is Challenging the Cult of Speed - Book Review

In Praise of Slowness: How a Worldwide Movement Is Challenging the Cult of Speed by Carl Honore HarperSanFrancisco. 310 pages. $24.95.

Carl Honore recognizes the buzz speed induces. And that s why his book In Praise of Slowness is worth reading. He's not some Luddite who curses the invention of e-mail and BlackBerrys. Nor is he a hippie urging us to go back to the land and to the natural rhythms of country life. Honore is a busy Londoner trying to figure out how to take the hurry out of bedtime stories with his son. He has found a way: slowness.

Honore tells of a "backlash against speed that is moving into the mainstream." From schools to offices, at hospitals and gyms, in kitchens and bedrooms, "people are refusing to accept the diktat that faster is always better," he writes. "And in their many and diverse acts of deceleration lie the seeds of a global Slow movement."

But "movement" implies a coherence that proponents of slowing down lack. There are no international headquarters, no leaders, no coordination, not even a website. Many people opt to slow down without feeling part of a global campaign. That doesn't trouble Honore. "Every act of deceleration gives another push to the Slow movement," he says.

Grassroots groups are cropping up worldwide. Japan's Sloth Club, Europe's Society for the Deceleration of Time, and the U.S.'s Take Back Your Time coalition advocate an unhurried approach to life.

Some pro-Slow organizations focus on a particular element of life. The Slow Food movement, based in Italy, promotes "the very civilized notion that what we eat should be cultivated, cooked, and consumed at a relaxed pace," writes Honore. Advocates believe that we can eat well and save the planet.

The Slow Food manifesto says it all: "Our century, which began and has developed under the insignia of industrial civilization, first invented the machine and then took it as its life model. We are enslaved by speed and have all succumbed to the same insidious virus: Fast Life, which disrupts our habits, pervades the privacy of our homes, and forces us to eat Fast Food."

Italy is also home to the Slow Sex movement. "If you look around the world, there is a growing desire to slow down," founder Alberto Vitale tells Honore. "In my opinion, the best place to start is in bed."

Honore digs into other topics, too. He lifts weights under the guidance of Ken Hutchins, creator of the SuperSlow weightlifting regimen. "The modern mentality is that doing something...