Reading for Pleasure

I'm not sure how it happened, but somewhere in the last two years of studying and research and analysis, I forgot how it felt to read for pleasure. And I do mean pleasure. I don't mean fun. I did a perfectly adequate job of reading for fun during my summer and between-semester breaks.

Reading for pleasure, at least my reading for pleasure, often includes a greater degree of absorption than reading for fun. When I read for fun, I want to whoosh my way through a plot line that I find entertaining. I want to like the characters, or I want to like to like the characters (all of the best characters--literary and otherwise--are, after all, works in progress). And I want to read quickly. Reading for fun can be done in a day. The analytical side of my brain doesn't tend to get terribly involved when I read for fun.

But oh! when I read for pleasure, I invest my faculties into the book. (And at this stage, I can't turn off my analytical mind. But I find my mind is always satisfied when it has some interesting topics to think through and I don't have to think them through on a timetable.) I like to take my time, to taste the language, to meander through the words. I like to pause and ponder, stop and wonder.

I like to read for pleasure in the same way I travel: I like to go where my whims take me, wander at will, and move forward at my own pace. It's soothing. It's calming. It's wonderful.