why read?

taken from Zafra's blog:

Life Extension Systems

At the awards lunch for the Philippine Star and National Bookstore’s “My Favorite Book” contest at Le Souffle, the jurors were asked to talk about their own favorite books. I was about to go with my default settings—The Catcher In The Rye, The Great Gatsby—but the more I thought about the question the less decisive I got. I’ve read a bunch of books since Catcher and Gatsby and loved them. There’s A Sport And A Pastime by James Salter, Love In A Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford, A Handful Of Dust by Evelyn Waugh. Dostoevsky’s The Idiot took me a year to get through, but I loved it. And Persuasion and Dune. I love Tess of the D’Urbervilles, the Old Testament, The Ogre by Michel Tournier. Catch-22 knocked me flat, as did The Age Of Innocence. Why do I have to choose? It’s like being asked to choose which one of my cats I would save from the gas chamber.

I got to thinking: Why do I read? That seemed an easier question. And I figured that I read because I only have one life and much as I love it, I don’t like the limitation. So I read books, especially novels, for the extra lives. By my reckoning, a good novel is an extra life lived. I’ve never fled Moscow at the approach of Napoleon’s army, but I know what that’s like. As a child I never met an escaped prisoner at a graveyard and helped him get away, but I know what that’s like. I didn’t personally fight in the Trojan War, figure out a way to end it, then spend ten years meeting cyclops, sirens, witches who turned my crew into swine, before getting home, but I remember the experience as if I’d lived it. That’s why I read books. Don’t make me choose one.

It reminds me of the question on what book prompted me to start my love for reading.  The fact is, I don't remember any particular book.  I was just drawn to the experience of reading when I was young.

It's been a long time since I've actually read a novel.  I miss reading