Ilma Rakusa has long been known to readers and literary enthusiasts, not only as a sophisticated author but also as a passionate reader who emerges from her retreat into literature with enriching finds and discoveries to share in the public sphere, where she wonderfully reports on what she has read. It is no surprise that reading is considered one of the main forms of resistance against the dictates of an economically driven zeitgeist; reading, which, despite the frequent practice of fast-paced styles, insists on the refusal of speed, haste, and rapidity as its only art form. In this programmatic essay, all forms of acceleration and, even more so, all critics of mobility and speed from Goethe to Virilio are listed; with joyful intensity, Ilma Rakusa engages with the concept of tempo.