Why We Read: On Bookworms, Libraries, and Just One More Page Before Lights Out

by Shannon Reed

Breadth and depth are not the same,

I carry with me the context that each work I read was written by a person who loved, wept, pooped, and slept.

I realized that I had to slow down, to read less in order to understand more.

Identifying the main point in a reading passage is a skill, I suppose, but one I’ve had to call upon exceedingly rarely, and never outside of academia

The list of stupid things smart people have said and thought in the general category of Books is endless.

“Our ultimate goal, after all, is not a good death but a good life to the very end.”

what kept me listening was the sense that the world of the books was filled with people longing for what they would never have again, not in this life, who could not magic away their deep regret.

W. S. Merwin’s “Thanks,” Elizabeth Bishop’s “Casabianca,” Kaylin Haught’s “God Says Yes to Me”—more