Thursday, May 29, 2008

What is Reading, Fundamentally?

What is reading, anyway? Novels, comics, graphic novels, manga, e-books, audiobooks — which of these is reading these days? Are they all reading? Only some of them? What are your personal qualifications for something to be “reading” — why? If something isn’t reading, why not? Does it matter? Does it impact your desire to sample a source if you find out a premise you liked the sound of is in a format you don’t consider to be reading? Share your personal definition of reading, and how you came to have that stance.

(Two weeks late for Reading is Fundamental week, but, well…)


Today is my last day of school. So I find it funny that this is fundamentally an education question. As a teacher I think every time we read anything, (a cereal box, signs, or bumper stickers), it qualifies as reading. I'm always having the children in my life read out loud. Be it menus or recipes it helps their reading and vocabulary so much. Personally, I don't like children reading manga, at least at school, because I'd rather see them reading larger blocks of paragraphs. I suppose I should just be happy they are reading anything with all the video games out there.

I consider magazines, cook-books, and audiobooks reading. Overall I'm pretty lax when it comes to my own stance of reading.

2 comments:

(M)ary said...

YIPPEE!! I agree. I have left comments on other blogs using a bumper sticker as an example. So glad you mentioned that too. I think that every one of us who loves books once upon a time made a quantum leap from cereal box to a BOOK. so any little bit of reading has the potential to lead the reader to the wonderful world of literature

John (@bookdreamer) said...

Interesting reflections on the medium of reading I came to diffrent conclusions as I started from trying to understand definitions of the process of reading