As an experience, reading requires mental concentration and uninterrupted space and time. People have very cherished and personal memories related to “close reading” or “natural reading” (and sometimes “active reading”). There may be a sense of emotional betrayal when a book character acts against expectations or when an author changes styles and explores different topical territory. There may be memories of conversations-in person and online-with other members of a book club. Reading is integrated with the reader’s lived life, and a person’s memory of a work is often integrated with other sensory experiences: the physical feel of a print book with the irregular pulp or the weight of an e-book reader and the luminescent screen, the motion and sounds of a train car, the taste of an iced tea at a local coffee shop. Experientially, reading is an intimate experience between the text (as a representation of the author) and the reader, who draws on lived experiences and imagination to make meaning from the language-based symbols. People may read linearly or in a skipping around method many will revisit texts for re-reading and re-exploration.

Reading content may be experienced in different versioned and multisensory ways: text, audiobook, video, and live performance.

There is a variety of reading matter over a lifetime, numerous genres and styles of writing, and reading content modes (print, multimodal electronic). Reading is often an integrated part of earliest childhood for many in developed societies and evolves through adulthood and old age. In people, in terms of learning and skills development, reading is a precursor to writing, and the skills in each co-develop and promote the advance of the other. As such, writing is used to understand the cultures and advancements of society. Historically, writing has been used to capture human knowledge and to share it with peers and with those who come after in the future. And writing is considered something set apart, something that people uniquely do for others-to entertain, to persuade, and to express care. Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air (2016)Ĭonventionally, reading is thought of as a uniquely human skill, which requires years to develop fluency. It was the relational aspect of humans-i.e., ‘human relationality’-that undergirded meaning. A word meant something only between people, and life’s meaning, its virtue, had something to do with the depth of the relationships we form.

I had come to see language as an almost supernatural force, existing between people, bringing our brains, shielded in centimeter-thick skulls, into communion.

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