Thursday Thoughts...

“We read to find the end, for the story’s sake. We read not to reach it, for the sake of the reading itself. We read searchingly, like trackers, oblivious of our surroundings. We read distractedly, skipping pages. We read contemptuously, admiringly, negligently, angrily, passionately, enviously, longingly. We read in gusts of sudden pleasure, without knowing what brought the pleasure along. ‘What in the world is this emotion?’ asks Rebecca West after reading King Lear. ‘What is the bearing of supremely great works of art on my life which makes me feel so glad?’ We don’t know: we read ignorantly. We read in slow, long motions, as if drifting in space, weightless. We read full of prejudice, malignantly. We read generously, making excuses for the text, filling gaps, mending faults. And sometimes, when the stars are kind, we read with an intake of breath, with a shudder, as if someone or something has ‘walked over our grave,’ as if a memory had suddenly been rescued from a place deep within us—the recognition of something we never knew was there, or of something we vaguely felt as a flicker or shadow, whose ghostly form rises and passes back into us before we can see what it is, leaving us older and wiser.” 

Alberto Manguel, A History of Reading

That would probably be the longest quote I have ever used in my Thursday Thoughts ponderings; but I didn't edit it because I really think the landscape the words traverse through its entirety say most everything needed to be said about the act of reading; and that to have removed parts of it would have been to somehow reduce in great part the value of reading experiences.

Almost my longest ever sentence as well!

Reading does all of this and he expresses it so beautifully - we read  searchingly, distractedly, admiringly, full of prejudice, weightless and then the shudder...

Reading is not a homogeneous state as anybody who has ever had to read for study or work knows; it is nothing like reading for pleasure. Reading for pleasure can also be different - filling in time, trying to distract yourself; or so deeply entranced by a book you just want to disappear and not take part in your real life for a bit.

The many pleasures of reading, if you can just begin...