It's Not Personal, It's Reading

When was the first time you told a friend about a book you were reading? Think about that conversation. Did they share a different perspective on one of the characters? Did they wish there was a different ending? Perhaps they hated the book altogether and the two of you came close to fisticuffs in disagreement!

I have heard many say that reading is a personal thing. But if this were the case, we would never share our reading with others and if we did, we wouldn’t be affected by their opinions.

I believe that reading is a social experience. When I read, I experience a story and the book comes alive. The characters in the story become like real people and I feel like I have lived the experiences right along with them. This is a personal experience, but for me, the reading process doesn’t end there. If I experience a book but don’t share that experience with anyone, I feel a sense of incompleteness. There is something missing.

Much like traveling to the most exotic destination without someone to marvel over the view with, reading a book without talking about it with someone leaves out one of the most important parts of the reading experience. When the reading experience is shared, the book is no longer confined to one life, one perspective, one possibility.

The first time I remember feeling the impact of a shared reading experience was during my Senior year in college. I was taking a Victorian Literature class on Friday nights from 5:30 – 9:30 pm. This class was obviously packed…just kidding. There was a grand total of 7 people in the whole class, including me. 6 girls and 1 guy…I wonder what he was there for? We read and discussed 5 novels that semester and I may or may not have watched the movie to get through a couple of them, but that’s not the point.

One of the books we read in that class was Jane Eyre and it was my first time reading it. Everyone else in the class held the opinion that it was completely romantic and Jane and Mr. Rochester were the power couple of the Victorian Age. I however, found the story infuriating and considered Mr. Rochester a horrible human being. I was alone in my opinion. Just me against the other 6 people in the class. We discussed and analyzed and argued and everyone told me I was dead wrong about the whole thing. It. Was. Amazing.

This was my first real understanding of the power of a shared reading experience. Without that discussion, I would have read Jane Eyre, passed the exam, and tossed the book away. But sharing that reading with 6 other people gave the book another chance. It allowed Jane Eyre to go on living with more possibilities and more voices. Because of that shared reading experience, I have revisited the story of Jane Eyre several times over the years since. I still hold the same opinion that I did back then. But I’ve never been able to dismiss the story. I keep coming back to it to see what else it has to say. That story meant something to those 6 people and I want to know what.

Reading might be a personal thing on the surface. Every reader brings their own perspective, experiences, and preconceived ideas to the story. But if we leave that story in our own minds, we stifle the true effect that it could have on us. Considering reading as only personal does such an injustice to the story. Characters and stories have so much more to say than what we can each individually glean from them.

The shared reading experience allows us to uncover a story’s full potential and gives it room to breathe and live and go on living, haunting us with wonder of what else it might have to say. What else it might have to say, we will never discover. Until we share.