Reading is social, Reading is power

The Book Expo : Reading and its well-contents
by Gregory McNamee - May 31st, 2007

Saint Ambrose did not move his lips when he read. Neither did Ambrose’s pupil and colleague Saint Augustine. The Roman chroniclers who witnessed this feat thought it only a curiosity, and the provincial missionaries’ example took generations to become the ruling style of reading in the West.....

... reading is a social act, involving a history of formal and informal accords establishing that written words have certain meanings and shapes, that they are to be used in certain ways. Reading is at the same time an intensely individual act: each reader approaches a text differently, bringing to bear experience and personality on another’s words. It is a complex mental activity, involving several areas of the brain at once. Reading is physiologically complex as well, demanding that the eyes dart around the page hundreds of times each second to take in bits and pieces of visual information....

read all of it here


Then come to the library and find something else to read!