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Lost in a Book: The Psychology of Reading for Pleasure
Examines the social forces that have shaped reading, discusses the nature of reading skills, and suggests connections between reading and dreaming and hypnotic trance
352 pages, Paperback
First published September 10, 1988
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 25, 2009
Victor Nell seeks to answer basic questions about how and why people read for pleasure in this book. He covers both theory and empirical research competently and from a variety of perspectives. The focus of much of this work is on the voracious readers who congregate at Goodreads, so I am a bit surprised it is not reviewed more frequently here.
January 2, 2012
I don't have a background in psychology, so for me this book was quite dense. It is strongest when it reviews the literature on cognitive processes of reading; I found it to be sensitive and thorough, with some welcome influence from literary theory. Probably I'm not qualified to judge, but the empirical sections seemed to detail a lot of effort tainted by shoddy experiment design. I doubt that many people are still reading a study that came out of South Africa in the 1980s, but I found it helpful and would recommend it.
March 18, 2025
Quotes
Pleasure reading is playful: it is a free activity standing outside ordinary life; it absorbs the player completely, is unproductive, and takes place within circumscribed limits of space and time. (Huizinga, 1938; Caillois, 1958). Ludic reading (from the Latin ludo, I play: Stephenson, 1964) is therefore useful characterization of pleasure reading, reminding us that it is at root a play activity, intrinsically motivated and usually paratelic, that is, engaged in for its own sake (Deci, 1976; Apter, 1979). – p 2
CB: Versus telic, which is doing it for external reward.
Like dreaming, reading performs the prodigious task of carrying us off to other worlds. But reading is not dreaming because books, unlike dreams, are subject to our will: they envelop us in alternative realities only because we give them explicit permission to do so. Books are the dreams we would most like to have, and, like dreams, they have the power to change consciousness, turning sadness to laughter and anxious introspection to the relaxed contemplation of some other time and place. – p2
Absorption and entrancement
The matrix of excitement and tranquillity within which reading pleasure is achieved. CB edited. – p 9 The physiological changes in the reader mediated by the autonomic nervous system, such as alterations in muscle tension, respiration, heart beat, electrical activity of the skin, and the like. These events are by and large unconscious and feed back into consciousness as a general feeling of well-being. – p 9.
CB: In his 1988 book, Victor Nell writes of the research he did into Ludic reading, and …
Among the mysteries of reading, the greatest is certainly its power to absorb the reader completely and effortlessly and, on occasion, to change his or her state of consciousness through entrancement. – p 73
Preliminary interviews with two readers, one of whom became a subject in the laboratory study, suggested that some keep pile up these old friends on their bedside table for use during the most precious reading time of the day, and the minutes before falling asleep. Other readers, however, seldom reread, and then only a long time after the first reading. – p 251
The data indicate so that re rating is the exception rather than the rule: 16 readers reported that re reading is 5% or less of their monthly reading and nine of these specify 2% or less the group mean of 9.96% substantially exceeded by only two readers.
It seems likely that rereading old favourites renders the formulaic even safer and that readers who do a great deal of rereading have especially high needs for this kind of security. However, the group discussion brought to light a covert form of rereading which serves the same purpose; Namely, to purge the formulaic of the unexpected. One method is san it's double reading and what she first schemes and then, having noted lurking dangers in the narrative, re reads the same material more slowly. – p 251
Books may be used either voraciously and anxiously to hold consciousness at bay, as with Type A readers, or to heighten it, as with Type B’s. We suggested that the fundamental distinction between them lay in the tone of consciousness, with the inner life of Type A readers being governed by fearfulness, anxiety, guilt, and other negatively toned affective states and that of Type B’s by positive expectations and the recycling of enjoyable experiences. – p 254
This tell me the story again bedtime phenomenon has another adult parallel in that class of reader who repeatedly returns to the same book, rereading it at short intervals with evidently undiminished enjoyment. Such readers sometimes keep a pile of these old friends on their bedside table and select one of these rather than a new book for the most delectable reading time of the day, the hour that merges quietly into darkness and sleep. – p 58
Pleasure reading is playful: it is a free activity standing outside ordinary life; it absorbs the player completely, is unproductive, and takes place within circumscribed limits of space and time. (Huizinga, 1938; Caillois, 1958). Ludic reading (from the Latin ludo, I play: Stephenson, 1964) is therefore useful characterization of pleasure reading, reminding us that it is at root a play activity, intrinsically motivated and usually paratelic, that is, engaged in for its own sake (Deci, 1976; Apter, 1979). – p 2
CB: Versus telic, which is doing it for external reward.
Like dreaming, reading performs the prodigious task of carrying us off to other worlds. But reading is not dreaming because books, unlike dreams, are subject to our will: they envelop us in alternative realities only because we give them explicit permission to do so. Books are the dreams we would most like to have, and, like dreams, they have the power to change consciousness, turning sadness to laughter and anxious introspection to the relaxed contemplation of some other time and place. – p2
Absorption and entrancement
The matrix of excitement and tranquillity within which reading pleasure is achieved. CB edited. – p 9 The physiological changes in the reader mediated by the autonomic nervous system, such as alterations in muscle tension, respiration, heart beat, electrical activity of the skin, and the like. These events are by and large unconscious and feed back into consciousness as a general feeling of well-being. – p 9.
CB: In his 1988 book, Victor Nell writes of the research he did into Ludic reading, and …
Among the mysteries of reading, the greatest is certainly its power to absorb the reader completely and effortlessly and, on occasion, to change his or her state of consciousness through entrancement. – p 73
Preliminary interviews with two readers, one of whom became a subject in the laboratory study, suggested that some keep pile up these old friends on their bedside table for use during the most precious reading time of the day, and the minutes before falling asleep. Other readers, however, seldom reread, and then only a long time after the first reading. – p 251
The data indicate so that re rating is the exception rather than the rule: 16 readers reported that re reading is 5% or less of their monthly reading and nine of these specify 2% or less the group mean of 9.96% substantially exceeded by only two readers.
It seems likely that rereading old favourites renders the formulaic even safer and that readers who do a great deal of rereading have especially high needs for this kind of security. However, the group discussion brought to light a covert form of rereading which serves the same purpose; Namely, to purge the formulaic of the unexpected. One method is san it's double reading and what she first schemes and then, having noted lurking dangers in the narrative, re reads the same material more slowly. – p 251
Books may be used either voraciously and anxiously to hold consciousness at bay, as with Type A readers, or to heighten it, as with Type B’s. We suggested that the fundamental distinction between them lay in the tone of consciousness, with the inner life of Type A readers being governed by fearfulness, anxiety, guilt, and other negatively toned affective states and that of Type B’s by positive expectations and the recycling of enjoyable experiences. – p 254
This tell me the story again bedtime phenomenon has another adult parallel in that class of reader who repeatedly returns to the same book, rereading it at short intervals with evidently undiminished enjoyment. Such readers sometimes keep a pile of these old friends on their bedside table and select one of these rather than a new book for the most delectable reading time of the day, the hour that merges quietly into darkness and sleep. – p 58
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews