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

by Shannon Reed

In writing this book, I’ve come to realize perhaps the most important reason I’ve remained so: the act of reading makes me feel safe. Not the book itself—paperback, hardcover, e-, I truly do not care—but the exercise of running my eyes over the words. The translation from symbol into meaning. The direct, pleasant diction of the voice inside my head. The influx of information. The transport to other lives, other worlds.

But reading! That I could do. When I read, I felt smart. And in reading, I was never lonely, the way I sometimes felt in real life. Reading did not lead me astray. The words were clear, and if I didn’t understand them, it wasn’t because I didn’t hear them correctly. No one cared if I reread (asked the book to repeat, that is) multiple times. And people mostly left me alone when my nose was buried in a book. Reading was always safe and always good company.

My students tell me “I don’t read anymore” with utter sincerity, and then turn back to their phones and laptops to read away. We all read, all the time. Just perhaps not books.

Reading a book is quiet, clear, and organized. It’s not hard. It waits until I am ready, pauses when I need a break, and is still happy to repeat. Reading absolutely never says “Just forget it” when I need clarification. It doesn’t care how I pronounce the words in my head (or aloud, for that matter). It never makes me feel worse and rarely makes me feel lonely. Reading gives me the world. And that, friends, is why I read.

After all, the undisputed pleasure of a series is returning to the familiar, in order to see how you yourself have and have not changed.

Reading is a solitary pursuit, by nature, but the pleasure of discussing what one has read is deeply collective, the reason why we seek out book clubs, press a novel we enjoyed into a friend’s hands, and jet to review sites to warn others away from (or beckon them into) a book.

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

Reading is no longer a race that I might win, but a lifelong companion, a dear friend who’s always there for me but never, ever asks for a slice.

Books do have a main point after all, but it changes for each reader, and for each group of people puzzling their way to it. There are so many different things to learn from Diary, but what our group had settled on was a stark reminder that knowing the right thing to do is not necessarily the first step toward doing it. Every one of us grasped that protecting innocent fellow humans was the only morally correct choice. Yet only one of us was willing to admit what had to be true: that if this has been asked of most of us, we wouldn’t have done it.