LVE

“Authors are curators of experience. They filter the world's noise, and out of that noise they make the purest signal they can-out of disorder they create narrative. They administer this narrative in the form of a book, and preside, in some ineffable way, over the reading experience. Yet no matter how pure the data set that authors provide to readers-no matter how diligently prefiltered and tightly reconstructed-readers' brains will continue in their prescribed assignment: to analyze, screen, and sort. Our brains will treat a book as if it were any other of the world's many unfiltered, encrypted signals. That is, the author's book, for readers, reverts to a species of noise. We take in as much of the author's world as we can, and mix this material with our own in the alembic of our reading minds, combining them to alchemize something unique. I would propose that this is why reading "works": reading mirrors the procedure by which we acquaint ourselves with the world. It is not that our narratives necessarily tell us something true about the world (though they might), but rather that the practice of reading feels like, and is like, consciousness itself: imperfect; partial; hazy; co-creative.”
― Peter Mendelsund, What We See When We Read

“The secret of a good librarian is that he never reads anything more of the literature in his charge than the title and the table of contents. Anyone who lets himself go and starts reading a book is lost as a librarian...He's bound to lose perspective.”
― Robert Musil, The Man Without Qualities

“Thus, when we discuss the feeling of reading we are really talking about the memory of having read.”
― Peter Mendelsund, What We See When We Read

“Writers closely observe the world and record their observations. When we remark that a novel is "finely observed," we are praising the writer's ability to bear witness. This bearing witness is composed of two acts: the author's initial observation in the real world, and then the translation of that observation into prose. The more "finely observed" the text, the better we readers recognize the thing or event in question. (Again-seeing and acknowledging are different activities.)”
― Peter Mendelsund, What We See When We Read