Reading Well

Sarris's manifesto on how to actually read: read mostly fiction; read slowly; read in a voice in your head; let very good books layer over your reality "like a fresh coat of moss." Reading, he argues, is letting another person model the world for you — an act of intimacy with the dead and absent. He warns that book clubs and reading-the-same-things-as-everyone-else may dilute the effect, and encourages the reader to seek out the excellent works from across cultures and centuries.