Different Kinds Of Reading

(Atticus Books, interior.)

Reading is a host of very different activities. As you know, I have developed a highly specific focus for rereading but this is because of blogging. Pre-Internet, I would have written articles, and maybe a book, on Poul Anderson's works but would have struggled to get them published and would hardly have gone into as much detail as on the blog. This is a new kind of (re)reading and writing experience and everyone does it their own way. Another blogger seems to read anything and everything as long as it is sf. I am just no longer interested in that. Maybe eventually everyone will just write their own blog and not look at anyone else's?

Other Reading Styles

(i) CS Lewis pointed out two differences between high- and low-brow reading. Low-browers not only read different kinds of books but also read them differently. Nothing is ever reread. A book taken from a shelf is immediately put back as soon as it is realized that, "I've read that one." Read books are discarded like empty cigarette packets.

 

(ii) I heard of someone who endlessly reread Pride And Prejudice. I though that that sounded very limited. However, P&P is an extremely rich text.

 

(iii) I do not share the common enthusiasm for endlessly rereading Tolkien.

(iv) In John Grisham's Camino novels:

bookseller Bruce Cable loves buying, selling and sometimes just owning rare first editions but likes reading new authors whom he knows and whose books he sells;

novelist Mercer Mann prefers living female writers.

We are just not doing the same kind of reading.

Regarding first editions, to switch to comics, I will never own Action Comics, No. 1, because:

 

I will never see it for sale;

if I did see it for sale, then I would not be able to afford it;

if I were able to afford it, then I would have other things to do with that amount of money.

 

If you want to read it, then you buy a later edition or a reprint. "First editions" have a value that is entirely disconnected from any pleasure in reading them.