How to Read a Book: 10 Rules from a Reviewer

How do you read a book? Like most people, I still decipher the meaning of words printed on sheets of paper bound together, but perhaps you prefer to stare at pixels on a screen or listen to your favorite narrator through earbuds. They all read my book. I think each of us is looking for what the critic Roland Barthes called “the pleasure of the text,” although finding joy in what we read does not necessarily mean a steady diet of novels and thrillers. Scientific works, serious fiction, poetry, a writer’s signature prose style – all provide their own kind of textual pleasure.