Customer Reviews

Lost in a Book: The Psychology of Reading for Pleasure

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In this book, Victor Nell reports research that he carried out regarding what he terms ludic reading, or reading for pleasure. It makes extremely interesting reading, despite its technical content - it is in fact an absorbing narrative in itself. Nell shoots down a number of misconceptions about teaching people to read more effectively, such as attempts to train eye movements, and he gives an account of readers' approaches and experiences that are enlightening for educators, readers and writers. No mean stylist, either. I heartily recommend it.

This book proves that reading is more than for research; it can be a source of real pleasure to lose yourself in a tempting novel or to learn from biographies about your heroes. When I chose this 'history' at a book sale, I was told it's a textbook. It does give sevreal theories about how we are able to read, but we are not told what to read. We are what we read. "You should make it a habit, when reading books, to attend more to the sense than to the words, to concentrate on the fruit rather than the foliage" was the advice from the 13th Century as it should be
today as well.

Writing requires a reader. Many authors have public appearances to read from their works. It was thought that listening to a text led the audience to buy the published piece. "Reading publicly was the best way for an author to acquire an audience. In fact, reading publicly was in itself a rudimentary form of publishing." Before I left Pulaski, our local celebrity/writer, Gregory Mcdonald read his poem for a group of us there for him to sign the books of his we already owned. We had no idea he had written a poem, of all things! He wrote in my A WORLD TOO WIDE "To an exciting future..."

In the movie, "Capote," we watched as Truman received a standing ovation when he read from a work in progress. Here in Knoxville, several local writers read from their new books; I've heard only one and disappointed that he had not acquired public-speaking skills and did not read as good as he wrote. There is a photo in this 'textbook' of Charles Dickens giving a reading. Back then, there were illustrated novels, like his A CHRISTMAS CAROL.

Now, this type of using drawings or pictures throughout a book has revived, starting with Jack Finney's back-in-time stories. The first published books were world classics like "Everyman," Goethe's "Faust," and Ibsen's plays. Oscar Wilde is reported to have remarked, "I never read a book I must review...." It has been proven that singing and reading to can slow down the destruction of the brain cells which causes Alzheimer's disease; "if you can't think of what to do, sit and read to your loved one -- if you read poetry, it's almost like singing."

There have been censorship on certain books since time immemorial; Nazis used it at a public book burning of some American books. I remember when Salman Rushdie's THE SATANIC VERSES was burned and he had a death threat on his head by Islamic fundamentalists. "The parents who took the Hawkins County Public Schools to court in Tennessee in 1980... argued that an entire elementary school series, which included "Cinderella," "Goldilocks" and THE WIZARD OF OZ, violated their fundamentalist religious beliefs."

This book is a reasonable history not only of reading but also of common readers, the individuals who, through the ages, chose certain books over others...at times rescued forgotten titles from the past...." This is the story of their small triumphs...and of the manner in which these things came to pass. How it all happened is minutely chronicled in this book." Writers read mainly from their own works to entice the listener to desire to possess and read all of the book. There are book collectors who never read the books they obtain and yet they won't give them as gifts or share with others.

Reading is a major pasttime to pass the time and to be occupied with a hobby which has been around for thousands of years. You can learn almost as much from fiction as the new non-fiction as, these days, we use a new style of writing history with the author's opinions included, not as objective as it was in the past. I've just finished one about Disraeli which was delightful.