Different types of people approach the same text with different motivations in mind, whether it is actively participating in a learning activity, wanting to learn more deeply because they are passionate about the subject, or simply enjoying the experience in the text. Depending on what motivates you to enter the text, you may come away with very different understandings of it.

As Melville Scholar, Wyn Kelley, shares:

We might also associate these modes of reading with a right-brain immersion in sensuous and imaginative experience as opposed to a left-brain navigation of the text, complete with charts, guides, and lists. …Students, in my experience, approach reading with both approaches in mind. They love the experience of losing themselves in a text, and they also savor the joy of discovering themselves and mastering their world. We do them a disservice if we try to separate those two modes of reading or prioritize them, suggesting that one exists only for private pleasure, the other for public instruction and assessment.

Harry Potter, the book series that turned a generation of kids into readers, is an excellent example of the combined efforts of pleasure and purpose-driven reading. In one reading, a reader might be interested in visualizing the fictional world of Harry Potter and map the places the characters traverse from Diagon Alley to Hogwarts, from the Forbidden Forest to Hogsmead. At another point in reading, the reader may become a fan of the lovely ladies of Beauxbatons Academy of Magic and of Headmistress Madame Olympe Maxime. In seven magical books, J.K. Rowling provided readers with limited descriptions of the school and its characters, leaving readers to fill in the gaps with their imaginations.

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