I can’t pretend that all my reading is at the level described here but this passage from Annie Dillard’s ‘Abundance’ does resonate very strongly. Who’s up for amassing half dressed in a long line and shaking a gourd together?
“Why are we reading if not in hope that the writer will magnify and dramatize our days, will illuminate and inspire us with wisdom, courage, and the possibility of meaning, and will press upon our minds the deepest mysteries, so we may feel again their majesty and power? What do we ever know that is higher than the power which, from time to time, seizes our lives and reveals us startlingly to ourselves as creatures set down here bewildered? Why does death so catch us by surprise, and why love? We still and always want waking. We should amass half-dressed in long lines like tribesmen and shake gourds at one another, to wake up; instead we watch television and miss the show.”
I should say, Abundance does wake you up (and make you laugh!)
a boy's head 