What reading does, ultimately, is keep alive the dangerous and exhilarating idea that a life is not a sequence of lived moments, but a destiny...the time of reading, the time defined by the author's language resonating in the self, is not the world's time, but the soul's.
The energies that otherwise tend to stream outward through a thousand channels of distraction are marshaled by the cadences of the prose; they are brought into focus by the fact that it is an ulterior, and entirely new, world that the reader has entered.
The free-floating self--the self we diffusely commune with while driving or walking or puttering in the kitchen--is enlisted in the work of bringing the narrative to life. In the process, we are able to shake off the habitual burden of insufficient meaning and flex our deeper natures.
Here is a beautiful line written by George R.R. Martin, about reader.
“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies", said Jojen. "The man who never reads lives only one.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Dance With Dragons.
When we read we are in the character of writer. We start experiencing different things written in books.
I don't know about other peoples.
But when I read a book, I put in all the imagination I can, so that it is almost like writing the book as well as reading it - or rather, it is like living it. It makes reading so much more exciting, but I don't suppose many people try to do it.
Stop thinking about why do we read so much. Start reading and when you explore this new world then there is no question "Why do we read?"
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