First of all, reading is fun

“Reading is the best pastime invented by homo ludens,” the Polish poetess Maria Szymborska (who won the Nobel Prize in 1996) said. “So, a pastime is something that should be associated with fun, and it doesn’t mean wasting time or letting time pass by.”

Time passes all the same, but when we read, this time becomes important, productive, a bringer of other treasures.

Corrado Augias wrote about reading, “There are no days in our childhood that we lived as intensely as those that we believe we lost without living them, days spent in the company of a beloved book. Reading is concentrated existence.”

Franz Kafka said: “If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skulls, then why read it? A book must be an ice axe to break the sea frozen inside us.”

 

Translated by Guarneri Sara and Bocse Adriana

Reviewed by Prof. Rolf Cook