The pleasures of reading

When you have to do something on a regular, almost clockwork basis, it can immediately zap the fun out of that activity. For me, a few weeks ago, this was how I felt about reading.

As the final weeks of Semester 1 tailed off, I felt pretty burned out and exhausted. Queen Mary's seem to have quadrupled their reading lists this year (or so it feels), and I know that I'm not the only one who had begun to feel the transition from reading for pleasure to reading because-I-must-read-this-before-next-seminar. Relaxed bedtime reading became a distant, hazy memory, and instead I found myself stressfully zipping through the words on the page in an attempt to meet the page count for that day.

The Christmas holidays are a wonderful time for rest as well as much more, and having taken a small break from the reading lists that have reigned over my life for the past 12 or so weeks, I have picked up a novel and experienced that lovely feeling that made me want to do an English degree in the first place. (I'm not saying that I dislike what I'm doing, just that in the last few weeks the workload got a bit heavy and stressful; but holidays = perspective!)

I started reading Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens again, after abandoning the text for a week in a stress-induced panic. For those of you unfamiliar with the text, calling it long would be an understatement - it's 925 pages worth of rich prose.

Initially, it was tricky to follow his thoughts in a linear fashion, but I soon managed to abandon all worry and ploughed on ahead, enjoying each paragraph and every sentence for what it was and simply allowing the prose to wash over me, a wintry waterfall of words, cleansing my burdensome soul and clearing the cluttered plains of my mind.

I began to experience that joyous feeling that made me want to study a Dickens module this semester, where the words lift off the page and stick to my skin, drawing me closer and pulling me in. I've had a couple of moments like this, where the words all blur into one larger vision and I am understanding the characters, the plot, the context, not through deciphering the words on a conscious level, but by experiencing the moment through feeling an emotion on a sub-conscious level. Something changes; I go into auto-pilot mode. No conscious effort or energy is required on my part besides the physical act of moving my eyes from left to right and back again. Reading becomes effortless.

These are the best times. You become so immersed in a book that it seems to become an extension of your very being, the words inhaled and exhaled like oxygen, breathing and living life, situations, experience; its ideas giving your own mind much nourishment, its energies soothing your soul and calming you down. The book, this large tome, becomes more and more malleable in your earnest hands with each time it is picked up. Marks that once would have annoyed you are now scars, wounds, signs of the life it has led, the life it has sacrificed for your pleasure; two weighty, meaty chunks of text gripped earnestly in each hand, physically pushing you to go on, because, look at how far you have come! And look at how much there is still left to enjoy!

You grow attached to some characters, whilst others, you loathe. You begin to wonder as to what will be their end. How will this be resolved? And all the while, you are eating words, greedily shovelling the into your mind and your heart, allowing them to feed your soul, letting them reside here now, allowing them to softly slide and soothe the ragged interiors of your being, biding their time. They readjust, shift, and change place as you grapple with an ill shaped sentence, a murky, fuzzy meaning, until BAM!

Shifting over, they lock into something more concrete, solid and most importantly, permanent. Your thoughts are now tangible. Touch them, see them, feel them, once hidden, now revealed. That is the pleasure of reading.