Recently, I've had trouble picking out a good book. Since it's summer, I've found myself wandering around numerous bookstores, looking for good books to add to my reading list. For the life of me, however, I don't know what to pick. Looking back, I've never had this issue before. Lately, though, I feel like every book I pick up has recommendations like "Absolutely brilliant," "Fast-paced throughout" or some such generic claim. This is aside from it being on such-and-such bestseller lists and the averagely-impressive number of copies it has sold. It places the innocent reader in the middle of a warzone. How am I to know, for instance, that this apparent international bestseller (among hundreds) won't leave me groaning at cliche phraseology or diction. Don't get me wrong, I am all for light-hearted, summer reads (I find it quite therapeutic actually). I just don't want to purchase a book that has a potentially intriguing idea and find that its shallowness is something to be marvelled at. Gone are the days, apparently, when I'd know a good book just by picking it up.

Tonight, over dinner, we were having a conversation about how one reads. The hostess described her husband as a fast reader. His tactic was that he only read the middle portion of every sentence rather than the entire structure. This topic, spoken about rather casually, made me wonder why people intrinsically read, and what they get out of it. For some, I’m assuming, it is simply an inflow of information—the source of useful cocktail-party updates or social conversation required at the outset of a business lunch. I realized tonight that I generally read to get a tangible feel for the beauty of the words. Reading a book slowly has its pleasures: the sensory experiences are heightened and the words themselves reveal several planes. You could call it ‘reading between the lines.’ In essence, a sentence has a certain structure and length for a particular reason; its impact reveals another facet to the story that is being read. Reading an entire story or article mid-sentence-wise, then, is like eating shrimp before the garlic marinade has properly soaked in: one understands the overall essence of the story, but does not appreciate it in all its beauty.

Of course I may be entirely wrong in this analysis. Reading a story in a detached manner may well enable one to see certain themes in it that an intense delve into its words would not reveal; the separation between reader and text may certainly give one a sense of a clarity. Personally, however, I prefer well-marinated shrimp.

(Pardon the analogy to shrimp—it was served at dinner.)