“What kind of girl reads Wealth of Nations for fun?” She closed the book and looked at the front jacket, then at him. “It’s a shame really. I had nothing else to read. I left all my Barbie comic books at home.”
“There was I, devouring books and yet allowing a man who had never read a book to walk me home for a bit of harmless fumbling on the front steps.”
“One day after the exams, the teachers sat at their desks correcting papers while the pupils read comics, played chess or cards or talked quietly in groups. Coulter at a desk in front of Thaw turned round and said, "What are ye reading?"Thaw showed a book of critical essays on art and literature.Coulter said accusingly, "You don't read that for fun.""Yes, I read it for fun." "People our age don't read that sort of book for fun. They read it to show they're superior.""But I read this sort of book even when there's nobody around to see me.""That shows you arenae trying to make us think you're superior, you're trying to make yourself think you're superior.”
“ireally think that the Book Life,After is the best book i've read this year because i really got into it and actually read at home and liked it”
“She had lolled about for three years at Girton with the kind of books she could equally have read at home--Jane Austen, Dickens, Conrad, all in the library downstairs, in complete sets. How had that pursuit, reading the novels that others took as their leisure, let her think she was superior to anyone else?”
“...she talked in one of her memoirs of ignoring her little brother when she was supposed to be looking after him: "I liked reading a book much more than I liked looking after him (and even now I like reading a book more than I like looking after my own children...)”