Reading rewards the reader who participates.
See, t
Said different: The reader will only get out what the reader puts in.
How many times have I sat and read something and not really engaged with it?
Four pages into a chapter, I blink and am not even sure how I got there.
How important it is to struggle with the questions that a book raises?
I mean, what do you think I am doing here as I type this?
The sign of an engaged reader might also be the sign of a true student.
Reading is more challenging and more enjoyable—more worth the candle—if we are willing to answer the questions a text puts to us, even (or especially) if those questions are implicit. So Alberto Manguel: “The existence of the text is a silent existence, silent until the moment in which a reader reads it. Only when the able eye makes contact with the markings on the tablet does the text come to active life. All writing depends on the generosity of the reader.”
-Alan Jacobs, The Pleasures Of Reading In An Age Of Distraction