Excellent.

An excellent book ...

Daniel Pennac on instilling a joy of reading ...

Read, read, it’s your duty to read …

But what if, instead of demanding that students read, the teacher decided to share the joy of reading?

The joy of reading?  Whatever could that mean?

The question demands no small amount of self-knowledge.

Let’s begin with a truth that’s diametrically opposed to the dogma.  When a book changed our lives, we didn’t read it for, but against, something.  We read and continue to read as an act of withdrawal, of rejection and defiance.  If that makes us fugitives, if reality has little hope of prying us loose from the enchantment of our reading, then so be it, let’s be fugitives building a new life, escape artists in search of rebirth.

Every act of reading is an act of resistance.  Resistance to what?  To the world of random demands.

Social.

Professional.

Psychological.

Sentimental.

Climatic.

Familial.

Domestic.

Fraternal.

Pathological.

Pecuniary.

Ideological.

Cultural.

Or self-conscious

The act of reading, when well-done, preserves us from everything, including ourselves.

Most of all, we read to defeat death.