What makes a reader?

[sartorias]

Catholic Bibliophagist asks here "What makes a reader?" She refers to a Times article, and discusses it. (She also has some great posts before it, but alas on one of the blog formats my machine hates, and won't recognize the links for comments about half the time.)

personal experience below

Comments

[bookaddict88]

Like obsessedwelves, for me, the story just is. It's hard to describe, since I don't quite get it myself, but I'll try.

I get vague images, sometimes, sure. But unless the imagery is really strong for me (and even then, the picture's not much more than a sketch or an outline), I have to concentrate to get anything at all. As for the sound of the words, if I'm not reading too quickly, I can appreciate them, and if they don't flow correctly they hinder my reading. But alone they have no meaning to me, so I can't say the story is forming through the sounds. Emotions come through the strongest, especially negative ones, but there are some stories where I don't really experience many emotions that I still enjoy, so that can't be all of it.

Really, it's just bare facts: this is what happened. I guess they're sort of "downloaded directly into my brain" as obsessedwelves described, though I take more of an active part in it than that implies. So when I'm reading a fictional story for the first time, especially if it's really exciting, I tend to skim more than read, looking for action and dialogue exchange, things that will tell me what is happening. I skip over long description -- since not many sensory details come through, they're harder for me to process. (Which is why reading a lot of non-fiction is more difficult for me, because it often doesn't have action or dialogue and I thus have to try a lot harder to understand it). So I rarely remember details the first read through, and will go back and read parts when I'm done to understand them better or because I really liked them. Subsequent read-throughs are usually more careful -- though sometimes the story sweeps me away again even on the second reading -- because I want to know more of the details (exactly what happened, fleshing out characters even more, etc.) now that I already know the basics. Even then, though, I can't tell you clearly what scenes or characters in the story look or sound like.

Does that help any?

[sartorias]

Oh, that makes it so much clearer. Thank you!