OF READING AND BOOKS
The Eskimo’s (Inuit) are famously held to have a great number of words for snow. [1] I have always felt the same should also be true in the English language respecting the concept of ‘reading.' A few years back I was asked whether I read the Metro on my way to work. I shot back that you didn't read the Metro you looked at it. Leaving aside that such a remark was way too smart arsed, there was a deep truth to what I was saying. We say that we are reading when looking at a advertising hoarding, thumbing through a tabloid newspaper, trying to understand an instruction manual, or absorbing War and Peace or Schopenhauer. All involve deciphering symbols on a page but they represent profoundly different phenomenon. Real reading, if I can call it that, is an intense experience, also it is a two way process, good books read you as much as you read them. By this I mean that the process of reading great writing challenges you to examine your own thinking, you...