On Enjoyment of Reading

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Reading sometimes is boring, but sometimes very interesting, depending on your purpose of reading as well as the material you deal with. In comparison with academic works, literary publications usually employ more images, contain appealing plots and provoke readers’ emotional reactions, so are more fascinating. Consequently, no matter what major you have chosen, when you have free time and the mind to read something as a pastime, in most cases, it is natural for you to pick up a literary book.

When I furthered my learning in Brisbane, Australia, I dwelled with an Aussie. He is a white, teaching Business courses in an opening learning institute. On the first day after dinner, he casually asked about my favorite reading. I answered that I preferred literary books, especially poetry and fictions.

Out of my expectations, on the second evening after I returned from school, my homestay presented me with a number of literary books, including a collection of Robert Frost’s poetry. He told me that he was also fond of verses produced by Frost. They made him relaxed and temporarily focused on beauty. I must admit that I finished very few of the books, as I was busy with my learning and abundant outdoor sightseeing.

Academic writing can also be very readable, especially when it is fluent and inspiring. An example in point is reading of philosophical works, which is often regarded laborious. If you pick up a book written by Arthur Schopenhauer or Friderich Welham Nietzsche, perhaps you will be immediately absorbed in it, and read it through without any feeling of boredom.

I once read a story written by an American anthropologist. According to his description, his chance reading of an anthropological book in summer at 14 assured him that reading was the most enjoyable in the world and thus made him later a scholar, teaching anthropology at a university. Recalling the reading years later, he said he was then completely overwhelmed by the content of the book, so after the nightfall, he even moved inside and continued his reading.

In China today, however, many people lost their interest in reading as early as they were still learning in secondary schools. Many an employee, after their graduation from colleges, refuses to touch a book, except ones concerning his career or promotion.

And because of this reality, a new type of self-employed writers mushroomed online who contribute articles to “chaishu (拆书)” (meaning “retell a book in simple and brief language”) for readers from various fields, who have little care about the experience of reading but still want to know a book.

The enchantment of reading can well up spontaneously only when the reader is at a state of leisure. Any hasty and purposeful reading can only leave a mound of tension and exhaustion, much far from pleasure and indulgence.