Mark Edmundson, Ph.D. (born 1952)
University Professor, Romantic Poetry, Literary Theory, Author

On how reading changes your life?

We all get socialized one time around, by parents, and teachers, and schools, and Priests, and Ministers, and what have you. And for a lot of people those values will do just fine. They’re community values, they’re long tested, and they’re long tried, and there’s something eminently respectable about them.

But there are other people who, for whatever reason, just don’t fit right in established values. They find themselves disgruntled, dissatisfied even with the best-meaning teachers, and parents. Those people go a lot of different directions, but one of the best directions they can go is to become obsessed readers. They read, and read, and read until they start to find people who see the world in way that’s akin to theirs. And then they feel that they’re home. They got a second set of parents, and a second set of teachers, and they can start seeing the world for themselves. A little bit different from the way the community sees it often.