I am learning to read.

Reading, like writing, is an activity one should always be learning. There’s no right way – and yesterday’s can hardly be today’s, so much has changed. Your awareness, tastes, moment and motives have changed. What you seek from words is not what you sought last year – or in the first flush of discovery.

In reading, as writing, one should be an autodidact, finding one’s own way. A reader who cleaves to instructions is obeying, not inventing, and reading should be an act of invention. A reader should know

· Why am I doing this?

· How ought I evaluate?

· Why is this the optimal use of my time?

A reader unable to answer such questions might be fairly asked, “What, then, are you up to? Why bother?”

I read for intimacy. I only read writers I’m eager to know, none, that is, who enrage or bore. I do not “read books” but authors signaling to me through their books. Is the author my kind of person? Do I share her or his values? Do I desire to “hang” with them (for we will be together for many hours)?

I do not read for plots. TV’s plethora have made these a dime a dozen. Jane and I often watch murder mysteries for our evening diversion. “Haven’t we seen this?” one or the other might ask. Yes, no, we can’t be sure. While such series to do their job as sedatives, they hardly enhance our time. I read to grow, not to know whodunnit.

I do not read for information if I can help it. Sometimes my need to know outweighs my desire to hang, but seldom. A tale badly told grates me intolerably. Jane is much more tolerant.

I fall in love before I realize why. Unraveling the mystery of attraction is part of the fun. My criteria for affinity are comparable in print or person. Do we share an attitude toward being? Do we crave each other’s attention? Are these folks interesting, unexpected, not same-old? Have they a sense of humor – and the humility to inform it? (Arrogance seldom cracks a smile.)

If I cotton to a writer, we go steady. One pleasing book or essay is an appetizer only. I try to get a sense of my new pal’s range, variety, limitations. Anybody who expresses themselves copiously is bound to repeat. Are they trying to spare me tedium by saying fresh?

I feel my way to the person behind the words. Nabokov used to insist that his stories were unrelated to his autobiography. To search for the man in his words, he’d sniff, was an invasion of privacy. The object dictated its features, as if a novel were a clock.

My response to Nabokov, whom I often admire, includes pity at this need to avoid our scrutiny. What a hurt puppy to have to hide that way behind a palisade of intellect.

The more a writer shares their inmost selves, the more I take them to heart. Montaigne, Spinoza, Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Dickens, Thoreau, Emily Dickinson, Henry James, for example, bleed onto the page, though they may not utter a word about their facts. The more a reader keeps aloof, the more I. I abominate showoffs and liars, who abound.

I evaluate writers based on their success reaching me across the chasm of place, medium, and time. There can no more be an objective standard for excellence than one can grade lovemaking. For me reading and writing are versions of the same activity: lovemaking – the highest and best use of my earthly hours.