Reading is thought to be a kind of conversation between the reader and the text. The reader puts questions, as it were, to the text and get answers. In the light of these he put further questions, and so on.

For most of the time this “conversation” goes on below the level of consciousness. At times, however, we become aware of it. This is usually when we are running into difficulties, when mismatch is occurring between expectations and meaning. When successful matching is being experienced our questioning of the text continues at the unconscious level.

Different people converse with the text differently. Some stay very close to the words on the page; others take off imaginatively from words, interpreting, criticizing, analyzing and examining. The former represents a kind of comprehension that is written in the text, while the latter represents higher levels of comprehension. The balance between these is important, especially for advanced readers.

There is another conversation that from our point of view is important, and that has not to do with what is read but with how it is read. We call this a “process” conversation as opposed to a “content” conversation. It is concerned not with meaning but with the strategies we employ in reading. If we are skilled readers, our ability to hold a content conversation with a text is usually pretty well developed. Not so our ability to hold a process conversation. It is just this kind of conversation that is of importance when we are seeking to develop our reading to meet the new demands being placed upon us by studying at a higher level.

Growing Up in the Library

I grew up in libraries, or at least it feels that way. I was raised in the suburbs of Cleveland, just a few blocks from the brick-faced Bertram Woods branch of the Shaker Heights Public Library system. I went there several times a week with my mother. She and I would walk in together, but as soon as we passed through the door, we each headed towards our favorite sections. The library might have been the first place I was ever given autonomy.

Even when I was maybe four or five years old, I was allowed to head off on my own. Then, after a while, my mother and I would reunite at the checkout counter with our finds. Together we'd wait as the librarian pulled out the date card and stamped it with the checkout machine — that giant fist thumping the card with a loud chunk-chunk, printing a crooked due date underneath a score of previous crooked due dates that belonged to other people, other times.

Those visits were dreamy, frictionless (没有摩擦的) periods that held the promise of leaving me richer than I'd arrived. It wasn't like going to a store with my mom, which guaranteed a tug-of-war between what I wanted and what my mother was willing to buy me; in the library, I could have anything I wanted.

After we had finished checking out the books, I loved being in the car and having all the books we'd gotten stacked on my lap, pressing me under their solid, warm weight, their Mylar covers sticking a bit to my thighs. It was such a thrill leaving a place with things you hadn't paid for; such a thrill expecting the new books we would read. On the ride home, my mother and I talked about the order in which we were going to read our books, a serious conversation in which we planned how to pace ourselves through this charmed period of grace until the books were due.

When I was older, I usually walked to the library by myself, lugging back as many books as I could carry. Occasionally, I did go with my mother, and the trip would be as engaging as it had been when I was small. Even when I was in my last year of high school and could drive myself to the library, my mother and I still went together every now and then, and the trip unfolded exactly as it had when I was a child, with all the same beats and pauses and comments and daydreaming, the same perfect rhythm we'd followed so many times before. After my mother passed away two years ago, I plunged into a deep shadow of grief for a long time. When I miss my mother these days, I like to picture us in the car together, going for one more magnificent trip to Bertram Woods, during which we talked, laughed — as if she were still in my company, giving me inexhaustible strength.

Recently, American President Trump announced his budget. One of the budgets would cut all money to The Institute of Museum and Library services and libraries across the United States. However, as far as I’m concerned, we need to save our libraries.

Libraries provide books and after-school programs for children. They help inspire a life-time love of learning and reading in children of all ages. The knowledge of the books in libraries is not available to the children at school. Without them where will kids with no Internet at home do their homework? Where will kids have a place to study or borrow books after school? Therefore, we need libraries for our kids. We need them so kids can grow up with a place, other than school, where learning and exploration is encouraged. Reading books can benefit children’s minds. Books allow them to imagine.

For adults, libraries serve as a place where they can use the Internet to apply for jobs, get job training, early voting centers as well as book clubs to help make new friends. It can also serve as a place to pick up a book and learn something new. Meanwhile, they can also rent a book and get away from it all.

Libraries save our information for the next generation. When we live in an age of alternative facts, where science is ignored in favor of personal feelings, we need libraries now more than ever. We need them to educate ourselves on the facts. We need them to have strong civic participation.

If you assent to me, you shouldn’t be silent on this issue. You can write or call directly to tell the president to save our libraries. You can also write to both your state Senators (参议员) and your district representative. Let them know this is good issue because all people use public libraries in their daily life.