How to Read Like You Mean It

To read like you mean it is to find ways to live with other people, exploring their worlds as they explore yours.”

Kyle Conway

In this candid and concise volume, Kyle Conway, author of The Art of Communication in a Polarized World, considers how we can open ourselves to others and to ideas that scare us by reading difficult texts. Conway argues that because we resist ideas we don’t understand, we must embrace confusion as a constitutive part of understanding and meaningful exchange, whether between a reader and a text or between two people.

Building on the work of hermeneutics scholar Paul Ricoeur, Conway evaluates the recurring paradox of miscommunication that results in deeper understanding and proposes strategies for reading that will allow individuals to give up the illusion of certainty. In elegant and compelling prose, Conway introduces readers to the idea that it is through uncertainty that we can gain access to new and meaningful worlds—those of texts and other people. 

A compelling book about the heart of reading. Conway affirms the primordial relationship between the word and the world and helps us read anything, including ourselves, with seriousness and care.

Sam Rocha, University of British Columbia

About the Author

Kyle Conway is an associate professor of communication at the University of Ottawa. He has published widely on communication and translation, including the books The Art of Communication in a Polarized World (2020), Little Mosque on the Prairie and the Paradoxes of Cultural Translation (2017) and Everyone Says No: Public Service Broadcasting and the Failure of Translation (2011).

Table of Contents

1. List of Figures and Tables
2. Preface: How to Read This Book
3. Acknowledgements
4. Introduction: What Is Reading?
5. 1. To Read Is to Feel Lost
6. 2. To Read Is to Wander
7. 3. To Read Is to Feel Love
8. 4. To Read Is to Be Free
9. Conclusion: To Read Is to Live with Other People
10. References
11. Index

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). It may be reproduced for non-commercial purposes, provided that the original author is credited.