The Joys of Reading I: (Re) Collection

  For whatever reason, going to university heralded the end of "reading books for the pleasure and discovery". I think that all too suddenly, I was inducted into a view that reading should be something both active and critically subversive. Gone was the idea that a book could be an adventure and simply a careless kind of joy. It's only been recently that I have rediscovered a little bit of the joy of reading for its own sake.
  Sometimes a book has no reason to exist other than that it is something intriguing. I have often bought books not because I would re-read those books or use them as one would an owner's manual (or a reference book) but because something inexplicable intrigues me about that book. And if I take the process of reading too "literally" (pardon the pun), I might lose sight of the fact that putting an author's thoughts on paper is already a miracle: it is a conversation from the writer to the reader. What more can one ask? Yes, I know that the author is dead, but sometimes we need to see this from different lenses and start to find more ways of understanding what it means to read a book.
    Reading Ken Wilber's Future of Religion and Frederik Pohl's Man Plus, I recently found myself transported back to the reading just for the sake of enjoying the thoughts and imagination of another person---that is, not having to take a stand, agreed/disagree, implement the writer's perspective, etc. etc. but to simply take part in a re-imagining of the author's vision. Allowing oneself to enjoy something without any ulterior purpose is a treat that we can always give ourselves at any time.