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169 8฀ , why we read reading is a mystery. Sales figures, opinion polls, and library circulation statistics collectively tell us something about who reads and what they read, but they shed little light on why people read or what they experience as they read. Theories abound, offered by disciplines ranging from literary theory to clinical psychology, each supported by credible evidence and most consistent with all of the others, but none of them really answers these central questions. The mystery has many sources. reading is not a single, straightforward act but rather a variety of very different activities, each with its own motivation and rewards, so we are investigating a complex of phenomena . we rightly believe that our choices of what to read are loaded with implications about our intellectual abilities and character, making us reluctant to disclose our preferences to people with questionnaires in hand. even when we want to answer questions honestly, we may not be aware of why we choose what we do. So we are investigating a complex of activities with multiple meanings, some conscious and some not. and, to some extent, reading is a genuine mystery: it may yield up some of its secrets to sociologists ’ polling techniques, psychologists’ PeT scans, and historians’ archival probings, but in the end there always seem to be motivations and responses we cannot account for completely. The Varieties of Reading Experience reading may be compulsive, compulsory, mesmerizing, boring, exciting, relaxing, inspiring, depressing, or matter-of-fact and devoid of emotional content—all in the course of a single day for a single reader. you get up 170฀฀ why we read early one morning, and the paper hasn’t arrived. you know it will be here soon, and you don’t want to get absorbed in a book, so you read the cereal box and the milk carton, an experience without intellectual or emotional content, bordering on the compulsive. Later you read the newspaper and experience a range of emotions: anger on the front page, sorrow on the obituary page, amusement at the comics. you drive to work and read billboards, or ride the bus or subway and read the ads as well as the rest of your newspaper . at work, you read your e-mail plus the ads, letters, and other routine trivia in your mailbox. you read a request for a proposal, or a budget revision , or something else that requires you to think and respond. If you are a teacher, you read what you have assigned to your students or grade their papers. you may read over your own lecture notes. at lunch, you read the menu and perhaps a magazine if you are dining alone. In the afternoon, you spend some time reading a professional journal, which requires concentration , note-taking, and research on the web or in one of your reference books. your printer needs a new toner cartridge, so you get out the manual and read the instructions. when you get home, you read a recipe or at least the heating instructions on a package so that you can prepare dinner. Later you may read a mystery or romance novel that takes you out of your own world—even to the extent that when the telephone rings you are momentarily disoriented. Or you may read the book that your reading group will discuss next week. Or you may choose nonfiction—a biography or a history book that may be as transporting as a novel, or a book on the latest theory in cosmology or neuroscience. you may have selected the book for any number of reasons; possibly you forgot to return the postcard to the history Book Club. If you have young children, you read to them—anything from Goodnight Moon to Harry Potter. you may consult a television schedule to see whether there’s anything worth watching. Before going to bed, you may read your personal e-mail, perhaps a note from a college-age child. as you brush your teeth, you may resort to reading the toothpaste label. all these experiences are reading, but they are all very different, and we engage in them for very different reasons, some conscious and some not. Let’s begin with the compulsive kind of reading—the cereal box, subway posters, and toothpaste tube. This is the Mount everest reading experience: you read it because it is there. For most of us, this practice is harmless enough and probably something we don’t even notice until...

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