Teaching One to Love Reading

I've always felt more strongly connected to the reading I do where a reference is made to something else I've read.

When an author alludes to the epic battle of Troy, Odysseus's tormented venture homeward, the seven rings of the Inferno, the Glass family, or Nancy Drew I can't help but fall just a little bit in love. I feel special, intimate, in the know. As if the author and I have now officially become brethren.

There's more and more love to be found in reading when one realizes how incorporated literature happens to be. It's what makes us up-and-coming authors feel some sort of right to the field: we are officially in the know.

And we want so badly for others to be as well. So much so that we write and write and write and write. We hope to come up with a way of gaining a new member of this not-so-secret society. And we want our writing to be the door through which they choose to enter into the sanctum of scholarship.

So in essence, teaching one to love reading is tantamount to teaching one to meditate. The student must possess the inner-desire, it's the talent of a teacher to unearth and foster that preexisting passion.