... less a bromide on the pleasures of reading and more an existential dive into the word-saturated brain. Her rewarding book pokes and probes our reading consciousness in order to overturn the nature of textual engagement, like stirring the ocean floor to find the strange, ghostly invertebrates living in its depths.

She’s every bit as ready to write about the healing, uniting power of reading, but her pages aren’t populated with wistful vicars and earnest librarians with tiny apartments crammed with books.

It flows almost like poetry and draws the reader into the experience of reading, and at the same time informs a perspective of reading.

... discerning.

Only some of the quotes are attributed in the body of the text. While White makes a note of this structural element, discerning readers may tire of flipping to the back pages. Meanwhile, the language at times strains to be lofty.