The art of reading …

… Inner Demons: An Interview with Steve Almond by Curtis Smith | JMWW. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Our favorite books are part of what allow us to peel back the layers of our own selfhood, to reflect on our experiences. The more we do this, the more we discover in those books. When I first read Stoner, I took it to be about literature as a form of redemption. A few years later, it was a book about how we engineer and escalate feuds. Then it was a book about the sacred mission of teaching, then the beautiful rigors of marriage, then the joys and terrors of being a parent, and finally a book about death. This is why I refer to our favorite novels as manuals for living.