reading is always this:

there is a thing that is there, a thing made of writing,a solid, material object, which cannot be changed,and through this thing we measure ourselves against something else which is not present, something else that belongs to the immaterial, invisible world, because it can only be thought, imagined,or because it was once and is no longer,past,lost, unattainable,,, 

in the land of the dead

... or it is not present because it does not yet exist, something desired, feared, possible or impossible. Reading is going toward something that is about to be,

and no one knows what it will be/