why we read

This was one crazy Beth day (there's a picture of me, being crazy).  Somewhere in the middle of it (between writing a chapter of the novel, rushing, with my husband, to procure the various food stuffs that our soon-to-be-home-for-a-week son will no doubt yearn for, and finishing up the second draft of a client project), I pulled a substantial portion of my personal library to the floor in search of a Roland Barthes book—Camera Lucida.  I still can't find it.  I might just have to buy another copy.

I did, however, discover (the book tumbling out onto the floor) A History of Reading by Alberto Manguel.  When it fell, it fell open to the passage below.  It seemed a sign.  I share it:

We read to understand, or to begin to understand.  We cannot do but read.  Reading, almost as much as breathing, is our essential function.