Good Readers and Good Writers- Reaction

My reaction to "Good Readers and Good Writers" by Vladimir Nabokov went something like "Huh, this guy did a pretty good job of coming up with generalizations; I wish that I could be as smart as him". I thought that the author had several good points which made this essay in particular interesting. First of all, the author had several good points which made this essay in particular interesting. First of all, I thought that it was interesting how when given a quiz on what defines a good reader, the majority of the college students tested answered emotional identification, action, and the social-economic or historic angle instead of the correct answers: imagination, memory, a dictionary, and some artistic sense. Something else which also caught my attention was that apparently when reading a book, a person should imagine himself or herself to be in it instead of the character (3). This caught my attention because whenever I read a book before, I would always pretend to be a certain character. So, depending on exactly what he meant by that statement, I could have been reading the wrong way all of my life. The final statement which I thought was interesting was "In order to bask in that magic a wise reader reads the book of genius not with his heart, not so much with his brain, but with his spine" (4). This sentence stood out because I never heard of anyone ever reading with their spine and at first it sounds kind of strange. My reaction was a logical one because it was based on thoughts.

Navokov, Vladimir. Good Readers and Good Writers. 1948. Web. July-Aug. 2011.