I consider reading itself - a state of art. It not only takes a skillful author to produce a great book, but also a skillful reader to comprehend it. “The dear good people don’t know how long it takes to learn to read. I’ve been at it eighty years, and can’t say yet that I’ve reached the goal” - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
Here is some traits, a good reader, in my opinion, should have:
A masterful reader must know how to extract from a book everything valuable it can offer. From different kind of innovative thoughts to simply learning new words.
Reader should adapt his reading method to each book. Someone who doesn’t know how to do that, will quickly run through “Einsteins’ theory” with the same pace he is used to run through his morning news paper.
What do you think? Do you agree? If so, what else would you suggest to someone who wants to improve his reading skills?
This reminds me a lot of Harold Bloom’s How to Read and Why. Bloom also offers his views on what makes a good reader. Here are some his suggestions:
“Clear your mind of cant.”
This idea derives from Samuel Johnson and suggests that we should let the work teach us how to read it. Pretty similar to your point! Good readers stop themselves from imposing their own desires or ideologies onto the work. Let the work reveal its artistic vision. Don’t assume there is only one correct style or way to construct a story, poem, or book.
“Do not attempt to improve your neighbor or neighborhood by what or how you read.”
Literature can improve you by expanding your horizons, your imagination of what’s possible, it can teach you what people valued in the past, and offer insights into what makes your neighbor tick, while transporting you to different times and places, but Bloom warns that it won’t change the world for the better in terms of offering some kind of social program. At best, it can only assist indirectly by helping you learn what it means to be human and help you come to know yourself as an individual.
“A scholar is a candle which the love and desire of all men will light.”
“One must be an inventor to read well.”
Also an idea inspired by Emerson. This seems like it would contradict the first piece of advice to avoid imposing our wills on the text. However, this is about balance. The best literary critics and readers allow the text to dictate the themes and issues, but are still inventive enough to come to new and personal understandings and insights of works of literature.
At the same time, some people read simply for enjoyment rather than deeper insight into the human experience or both or something in between and that is fine too. There are a lot of different motives to read.