quick survey question --

[tigriswolf]

How do you define reading? What is reading to you?

(Working on my thesis. It's been raining for 10 hours. My head hurts. I want to go back to kindergarten and not have to worry about anything anymore.)

Comments

[astrothsknot]

reading is standing on the shoulders of giants.

all the ages knowledge saved for future generations! It's the easiest thing other than clean water we can do to set the human race free.

All those ideas, contained in 26 symbols and what they can do or 2000 squiggles in kanji. it doesn't matter - it's power and freedom, because reading can bring so much to people.

from creating something and helping keep imagination alive and thus creativity alive and all the things that have flown from the silliest little thing.

even just entertaining you for a few hours.

Reading is one of the single most important inventions in the universe

[tigriswolf]

Ooh, thank you so much! How would you like to be credited?

[astrothsknot]

I can make that more coherent tomorrow if you want.

The upshot is reading is one of the most important things in the history of ever, because it preserves and disseminates ideas, stories and communications.

It speaks across times and countries and cultures. It keeps humanity learning, not just by the information it holds, but because it forces the human brain to develop and create. Reading sets up the conditions for creativity and invention

Reading is the soul of humanity set free to fly.

Credit me as HA Kirby

[tigriswolf]

I can make that more coherent tomorrow if you want.

Please do!

[schweedie]

Okay, while this isn't a straight answer to it, the question makes me want to pull out one of my favourite quotes from author Alan Bennett:

“The best moments in reading are when you come across something - a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things - that you’d thought special, particular, to you. Yet here it is, set down by someone else, a person you’ve never met, maybe even someone long dead. And it’s as if a hand has come out, and taken yours.”

SO, yeah. In short, to me, reading is - or can be, when you're lucky - a hand coming out and taking yours.

[tigriswolf]

Oh, that's gorgeous. I'll have to incorporate that quote, definitely.

[schweedie]

It's from a play called The History Boys, which I can't recommend enough:

- The more you read, though, the more you see that literature is actually about losers.
- No.
- It's consolation. All literature is consolation.
- No it isn't. What about when it's celebration? Joy?
- But it's written when the joy is over. Finished. So even when it's joy it's grief. It's consolation. That's why it gets written down.

It's got a lot about reading, poetry and history. :)

[caffienekitty]

Reading, particularly fiction, is spending time in another person's head, looking through another person's eyes at another person's world. It's a shift of perspective. It's an escape and a quest, a getting away from things and a discovery of other things; sometimes the things you discover change your own view of the things you are fleeing. It is uncountable universes, transmitted solely through language.

(I'm reposting this statement on my LJ under f-lock too because I have a lot of book people on my f-list. Thanks for asking the question, sorry I didn't respond until now.)

[tigriswolf]

Thank you so much!

What I find interesting is that I've been interviewing elderly emergent readers for my thesis and this is the final question I ask. So far, while they've all said different things, their answers basically boil down to freedom of some kind.

They're all so awesome.