I consider reading itself - a state of art. It not only takes a skillful author to produce a great book, but also a skillful reader to comprehend it. “The dear good people don’t know how long it takes to learn to read. I’ve been at it eighty years, and can’t say yet that I’ve reached the goal” - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
Here is some traits, a good reader, in my opinion, should have:
A masterful reader must know how to extract from a book everything valuable it can offer. From different kind of innovative thoughts to simply learning new words.
Reader should adapt his reading method to each book. Someone who doesn’t know how to do that, will quickly run through “Einsteins’ theory” with the same pace he is used to run through his morning news paper.
What do you think? Do you agree? If so, what else would you suggest to someone who wants to improve his reading skills?
OP is going to get slaughtered in the comments.
But it’s a valid point. It’s the whole reason they teach literature in university. People make a profession out of studying literature. This is because there is a richness to the written language that cannot fully be appreciated without knowing the art of its construction.
Anyone can learn to read a piece of text. But there is an art to being able to fully appreciate the nuance and what the writer intended to communicate through how they chose to construct the text.
Poetry may be the clearest example of this as poets will make very specific semantic, lexical, and structural choices that completely change the meaning of a poem if you don’t understand why the poet chose to construct the poem the way they did.
There is an art behind the structure of the written language. Authors will use a certain style of prose to add meaning to their writing. Some authors write in an almost lyrical way, some are more straight forward in their writing. These are all intentional, artistic, choices and absolutely it helps if you have mastered the “art” of reading to be able to appreciate these stylistic choices fully.
It’s the same as appreciating art. Anyone can go to a museum and enjoy art. But I will bet that if you study art and you understand why a painter chose a certain colour palette or lighting for their piece it will change the way you see that piece of art.
You can “master the art of reading.” Just like you can “master the art of conversation.” After all, art is just a skill that someone because extremely well versed in and masters its application.
Roast away. But it’s not an entirely invalid point.
I made a longer post arguing a bit with the OP, but if you don’t mind I’ll say here— you’re joining OP in assuming that authors have a single clear intent in writing the text, and your job is to uncover that and then read obediently along. But a good university literature class, especially in poetry, will hopefully be emphasizing things like the legitimacy of reader reaction, the importance of ambiguity, the impossibility of divining authorial intent etc. The text has no life apart from the intent of the author? Derrida and Bakhtin want a word!
It’s a bit reductive…