WHAT ARE YOU READING?

Extract

For someone who reads most of the time—on the train, in the library, at the dentist's—this is not an easy question to answer. Reading occurs at various levels of concentration; for me, focus is determined by the environment as much as the book. And what I'm reading now or in the past few years is not psychologically defining, I suspect, any more than what happens to be on my iPod is: both are subject to randomness, convenience, and passing attraction. Roland Barthes said he divided his reading in two branches: for work he read at the desk; for pleasure, on the bed. That's a bit too dichotomized as it leaves out the armchair and the waiting room, and I usually fall asleep while reading on the bed, but the basic idea is fair enough. A different place for different reading.