Reading Can Be

Fun

Work

Active

A gift

Escape

Borrowing

A journey

An art form

An exercise

An elevator

An education

A consolation

A door opener

An adventure

An investment

Human contact

Understanding

An active act

A creative act

Seeing by proxy

A life broadener

A mind stretcher

Mental exercise

A lonely activity

Software updating

An idea developer

Food for the mind

A form of escapism

A creative activity

A beautiful paradise

A conclusion yielder

A foundation of life

Satisfying curiosity

The key to knowledge

A little like a sport

A marvelous adventure

A comfort

Departure and arrival

The greatest solitude

A pleasure of the mind

A process of discovery

A workout for the mind

An act of civilization

An exercise in empathy

An imagination igniter

Getting lost in a book

The opposite of escape

To find out who we are

Knowledge and questions

Learning and reflecting

The road to achievement

To know we’re not alone

Where we finds ourselves

A search for lost family

The spark to imagination

A great extension of time

A gym for the imagination

Perception as translation

The opening up new worlds

The way out of ignorance

A rendezvous with the soul

Grasping the soul of words

The work of the alert mind

A fusion of text and reader

An active, imaginative act

More important than writing

An enlightenment of the soul

The best return on investment

A refuge from miseries of life

Access to a better way of life

A discount ticket to everywhere

Another way of being in a place

Standing in the place of company

What brings us to new knowledge

A solitary and sedentary pursuit

Completing the work of the writer

Necessary to the life of the soul

Bare and unprotected communication

The finest teacher of how to write

Escape, and the opposite of escape

A way to make contact with reality

What leads most writers to writing

A majority skill but a minority art

A technology for perspective-taking

The inhale, with writing the exhale

The first step to wisdom acquisition

A way to hear from successful people

As beautiful as anything else in life

Sowing, with rereading the harvest

The creative center of a writer's life

The path to success in school and life

A departure where we discover ourselves

A new way to interpret past experiences

An integral part of a well-rounded life

Engagement and exercise for the brain.

The perfect antidote to being on the go

The royal road to intellectual eminence

An ingenious device for avoiding thought

To the mind what exercise is to the body

A basic tool in the living of a good life

A college that we can attend all our life

An intelligent way of not having to think

An enlargement and challenge to the mind

To plug into the shared wisdom of mankind

An adventure like that of discovery itself

An effective medium between mind and mind

Going toward something that is about to be

The most important way to prepare for life

What takes us down the road in our journey

A way to learn new lessons from old moments

Untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting

An urgent, crucial dimension of life itself

A tremendous way to learn, relax, and escape

One of the greatest gifts given to humankind

A protest against the insufficiencies of life

The journey of those who can’t take the train

Finding a spring in the midst of a barren land

One of the most individual things that happens

Furnishing the mind with materials of knowledge

Something we can do almost anytime and anywhere

The nourishment that lets us do interesting work

One of the great pleasures that solitude can afford

Something that takes us to places we might never go

A more creative and imaginative process than writing

A relationship entered into with another vital being

Thinking with someone else's head instead of our own

Like breathing in, when writing is like breathing out

The best state yet to keep absolute loneliness at bay

A conversation with the finest minds of past centuries

A way to observe the world from another’s vantage point

Essential for those who seek to rise above the ordinary

One of the most thrilling and enduring delights of life

Access to whatever has already been discovered by others

The gateway skill that makes all other learning possible

A way to take in difficult situations and understand them

One of the best ways to learn about our lives and purpose

An exercise in walking in someone else's shoes for a while

Getting beyond the words to the story or meaning underneath

Communing with someone from the past whom you have never met

A healthy way attention deficit disorder can medicate itself

A conversation

Not a straightforward linear movement, a merely cumulative affair

That fruitful miracle of a communication in the midst of solitude

A way to get information and find out what's going on in the world

The nourishment that feeds the kind of writing we might want to do

Not a duty, and consequently has no business to be made disagreeable

The basic springboard for learning

An activity that people who are engaged with the world do all the time

When the inert signs of an alphabet become living meanings in the mind

A bridge which fills the gap between the real world and the imagination

A stouthearted activity, disporting courage, keenness, stick-to-it-ness

Like looking through several windows which open to an infinite landscape

A partnership - the author builds a house, but the reader makes it a home

The great extra-somatic keeper of our knowledge of what it is to be human

A mighty engine, beside which steam and electricity sink into insignificance

Acquiring a better understanding of life from our encounter with it in a book

An activity subsequent to writing - more resigned, more civil, more intellectual

A relationship between the writer and a person the writer will probably never meet

Taking in the sense or meaning of letters and symbols, especially by sight or touch

The only enjoyment in which there is no alloy - it lasts when all other pleasures fade

An exact, complicated, subtle communion between absent author and absorbed, present reader

The ultimate weapon - destroying ignorance, poverty and despair before they can destroy us

Learning to recognize and pronounce words, but also learning how to hear and understand them

A ritual involving gestures, positions, objects, spaces, materials, movements, shades of light

Being surrounded by the beautiful stillness when you hear an author’s words reverberating in your head

Part of the process of writing - the necessary completion without which writing can hardly be said to exist

So vast a gift that it is difficult to see what is outside its wrapping

Improving ourselves by other people’s writings, so that we may gain easily what others have labored hard for

The gateway to so many things that helps makes it possible for so many people to live together on one planet

Like travel, allowing us to exit our own life for a bit, and to come back with a renewed, inspired perspective

The essential process by which the intellect is cultivated beyond the commonplace experiences of everyday life

The why of our life and the why of our choices and the what has happened that we know and the what that we don't know

Cumulative and proceeding by geometrical progression - each new reading builds upon whatever we have read before

One of the greatest acts of civilization

Taking the free raw material of the mind and building castles of possibilities

Not a substitute or an excuse for a daily regimen of rigorous physical exercise, rewarding personal relationships, and sensible diet

A way for one person to live a thousand lives in a single lifespan

A multifaceted process involving word recognition, orthography (spelling), alphabetics, phonics, phonemic awareness, vocabulary, comprehension, fluency and motivation

Initial speculations generating a frame of reference within which to interpret what comes next, but what comes next possibly retrospectively transforming our original understanding, highlighting some features of it and backgrounding others

The equivalent of travel - the experiences described in books are more or less the same as the experiences one might have on a voyage...there are those who say that there is no substitute for venturing out into the world but it may be best to travel extensively but to read the entire time, hardly glancing up to look out of the window of the airplane, train, or hired camel