
I love this wisdom from a novel I am currently reading:
“There are four types of readers. There is the reading sponge, the reading funnel, the reading colander, and the reading sieve. The sponge absorbs everything it comes into contact with; and it is evident he remembers much of it later, too. But he is not able to filter out what is most important. The funnel takes in what he reads at one end, while at the other, everything he’s read pours out of him. The strainer lets through the wine and keeps the sediment; he ought not to read at all—it would be infinitely better if he simply dedicated himself to some manual trade. The sieve, on the other hand, separates out the chaff to give a result of only the finest grains.”
—Olga Tokarczuk, The Books of Jacob
What type of reader are you?
Interesting topic. I did a quick search for “different kinds of readers” on Google, Bing, You.com, and DuckDuckGo and there seems to be as many different list of the kinds of readers as there are different kinds of books. I guess the question to myself is “If I was a book then what kind of reader would I want to read me?”. I am pretty sure I would not want to read a book about myself. I think I would find it boring and file it under junk.
-B
What an interesting idea, to search for different types of readers! I’m sure one could categorize readers in various ways. Well but I am sure a book about you would not be junk!