How Girls Read
Michelle Slatella, in the NYT, on reading like a girl:
But there is one thing I notice my daughters doing when they hang around the house that makes me ache, with a terrible yearning, to be young again. They read.
Or more precisely, they read like I did when I was a girl. They drape themselves across chairs and sofas and beds – any available horizontal surface will do, in a pinch – and they allow a novel to carry them so effortlessly from one place to another that for a time they truly don’t care about anything else.
The link is from Mental Multivitamin, who accompanies it with a (qualified) book recommendation. Mmv wonders, “Can you still read like a girl?”
Still? I never _stopped_ reading like a girl: one book at a time, fiction preferred because of its transporting qualities. I’m a more critical reader than I was as a girl, and more selective. But I’m no less ardent. I often distinguish between books I love, especially ones that aren’t necessarily great, and ones that are good, even great, but that I don’t love.
January 3rd, 2009 at 5:59 pm
I agree! Is there any other way to read? I mean, certainly I read non-fiction and scientific articles differently than I do when I read in my leisure time, but I suppose I’m not sure why anyone would read for pleasure (or consider reading a pleasure) if reading wasn’t somehow transcendental for them. When I consider myself in a reading slump, it is precisely because I’ve found myself with a sting of books that have not whisked me out of this world!
(And yes, I can only read one book at a time, too. I feel I wouldn’t be able to give all of myself to a book otherwise, and anything less is doing neither myself nor my chosen book an favors!)