David Mikics

Very enriching and practical look at the art, skill, and enjoyment of reading. The early chapter titled "The Problem" is a bit of a slog, and can likely be skipped if you picked up the book based on the title (hint: "Hurried Age" is the problem).

The rest of the book does an excellent job of showing by doing. Mikics does not just tell you to read deeply, he takes the time to walk through deep readings of the examples provided. In the end, the amount of information in the book is a bit overwhelming. I can't help but wonder if the rules (14 of them!) could not be distilled into just a few simple axioms. I ended up skipping the final chapters on reading poetry, drama, and essays, not for lack of enjoyment, but simply for information overload. I hope to come back to each of these chapters later. Each reading subject chapter (short stories, novels, and the above mentioned poetry, drama, and essays) could easily be expanded into a full book appropriate for a college level reading course. I would gladly read such a book on any of these if Mikics were to write it.… (altro)