Reading is an interactive process

The quote “When I am reading a book, whether wise or silly, it seems to me to be alive and talking to me,” by Michel de Montaigne means that each book has a meaning and can relate to the reader in a way. Most authors can also relate to this quote. For example, Sherman Alexie, Maureen Corrigan, Anna Quindlen, and Gwendolyn Brooks saw reading as love, companionship, and a way of life. This shows that reading can be an interactive process. Author Sherman Alexie says his father loved to read. Since he loved his father with such devotion, he decided to love reading as well. He was young when he realized what a paragraph was. He understood a paragraph as a fence that held words together for a common purpose. For example, his family was a fence, his school was a fence, and even the world had different fences. Sherman says that he would read at night, at recess, and when his family would travel. When he read it was like he was trying to save his life. Now he is a writer that tries to help other people save their lives as well. Maureen Corrigan says that she was a really shy kid. She says that reading offered her companionship and an escape. As well as Sherman, she wanted to be like her father, who loved reading. She says that people can get a glimpse of different experiences and their world can be enlarged. While other kids were learning to sound out words in class, she was reading ahead of her classroom books. Anna Quindlen also has her own points of view. When she was small, she had always sensed that she should be somewhere else. She decided “to go places” through books. She “went” to England in the book Middlemarch and A Little Princess. She also went to houses with high ceilings and dramatic scenes. It was like a place she lived in, and it felt real to her. Anna learned who she was, what she liked, and what she dreamed about. Reading is her own world, where she can happily live. The passage “To Young Readers,” by Gwendolyn Brooks says that books are like