I’ve been thinking about the different kinds of readers I encounter and the different ways we read. I suppose I could come up with a dozen types if I tried but I think I’ve got it down to three kinds. I know, if I were really simplifying things, I’d get it down to two–but you know the old saw: there are two kinds of people–those who divide the world into two kinds of people, and those who don’t! At least on this topic I don’t. Curious?

The Easy Chair Reader. These are basically those who are looking for books that are TV in words–the stories just wash over them and rivet their attention. And if they don’t, they put them down. Or fall asleep. Some won’t touch very well-written stories that take some focus–psychological crime fiction for example, or a philosophical argument. I suspect these readers actually buy and borrow quite a few books and account for many of our best sellers. Most booksellers could not survive without them. I always am hopeful for this reader. At least they are reading and that is better than the non-reading population that rarely, if ever, pick up a book. And I wonder if at some point, they will tire of the same fare and branch out and explore books from other parts of the bookstore or library. I hope that someday, there will be questions about our world and our place in it, that will lead them to turn to writers who have probed these matters more deeply.

The Adversarial Reader. I wonder if this is a smaller group that might include literary theorists and critics, some reviewers, and religious zealots. These readers approach books determined to find what is wrong with them, why their ideas are wrong, or badly conveyed. You can tell you are in the presence of such a reader when you ask them what was the last thing they read that they enjoyed, and they just glare at you, wondering how you could ask such a supercilious or heretical question. This approach sometimes falls under the idea of the “hermeneutic of suspicion” that studies any narrative looking for the cleverly or poorly disguised exercise of power over some less fortunate human beings. No question that human beings have a sad record of doing such things, and perhaps we are never completely exempt of such behavior. But it seems pretty bleak. In the case of the zealot, anything written by those not a part of their group is suspect, and maybe even some that is! The difficulty of this kind of reading is that it is never open to meet a book on its own terms, to allow it to challenge the terms by which it is being read.

The Reader as a Discerning Lover. This is the person who practices a kind of golden rule of readers–they treat the author’s work as they would wish to be treated. They appreciate the hard work it takes to write a book and they give the attention they would wish for themselves to understand what the author is trying to do. They take delight when an author does this well–whether it is clarity of expression, development of characters who become real to us, a plot that draws us along, ideas that keep us thinking after we set the book down. They grow in understanding the writerly craft, recognizing allusions, metaphors, plot devices and more. They read discerningly, questioning when they find an argument or a character’s actions implausible. Such readers look neither for flawless perfection nor delight in searching out faults. They recognize that great thinkers have both challenging ideas and mistaken ones, and they may be different from ours! They realize that even great writers don’t always succeed to the same degree–some works of Dickens or Steinbeck or Ann Patchett are better than others–and yet we may enjoy each for what they are.

Actually, while I aspire to the third kind of reading, I suspect we all do all of these at some time. In an airport, a thriller that holds our attention through the endless announcements and distractions in the terminal and on the plane may be just the thing. It asks no more of us, nor we it. I’ve never read Mein Kampf but if I did, it would likely be as a hostile reader. The havoc the author and his ideas wrought are reprehensible. I might discern, but I cannot love. The most I could do is understand, as Churchill did, the appeal of these ideas, the fundamental danger they posed to human flourishing and world order, and that they must be resisted and not appeased.

To read as a discerning lover suggests that such reading is part of a lifetime of growth as human beings. We bring our past reading and life experience and intellect and moral discrimination to each new book we read. We are changed just a bit by each book we read. As we think about, discuss, and sometimes, as I do, write about the books we’ve read, we become part of a discussion that has been going on since people first put some form of stylus to some form of writing surface. In some form we consider what is true, good, and beautiful, and how we might live more truly, with greater goodness, celebrating and creating beauty in a world desperate need of such things.