READING. Vladimir Nabokov, a novelist who taught at Cornell University, used to ask his students: “What does it take to be a good reader?”

QUIZ

Vladimir Nabokov, a novelist who taught at Cornell University, used to ask his students: “What does it take to be a good reader? ”

Now you answer this question, choosing 4 correct answers from the list below:

1. The reader should belong to a book club.

2. The reader should identify himself or herself with the hero/heroine.

3. The reader should concentrate on socioeconomic angle.

4. The reader should prefer a story with a dialogue and action to one with none.

5. The reader should have seen the book in a movie.

6. The reader should be a budding author.

7. The reader should have an imagination.

8. The reader should have memory.

9. The reader should have a dictionary.

10. The reader should have some artistic sense.

What Does it Take to Be a Good Reader?

Why, for instance, do readers need imagination? When the author has already imagined the story for them? The answer is that no author can ever imagine the whole story for the reader. Writers must be selective, and so it's up to readers to supply some of the details missing from a particular text. It is in fact, “the unwritten” part of a text that invites our participation by prompting us no fill in the gaps and provide the missing connections.

As we read, most of us unconsciously anticipate what lies ahead, just as we draw on our knowledge and experience to interpret characters and incidents. So reading is a creative process, and because we are contributing to the text it becomes a living event.

Perhaps here, to Nabokov's list of readers' tools (imagination, memory and openness and sensitivity to word meanings) we should write an addendum: good readers often read with a pencil in hand.

Reading with a pen stimulates you to respond, to read actively. Good readers, like good listeners, attend, conceiving ideas about what they read, reacting to the story, poem, play or essay, as well as to the way the author is telling it; from these scattered impressions we form inferences and generalizations, in literature and in life.

This is where the final requirement listed by Nabokov, artistic sense, comes in. Reading and writing are reciprocal acts, each commenting on and enriching the other.

anticipate, v see what is likely to happen

addendum, n thing omitted in writing, a speech, etc. that is to be added

scattered, adj. not situated together

conceive (an idea) form in the mind

inference, n opinion reached from fact or reasoning

reciprocal, adj. mutual, exchanged between two people or groups

requirement, n sth that is needed or demanded as necessary