I recently finished "The Club Dumas", by Arturo Perez-Reverte, and found a quote from one of the characters at the end of the novel to be insightful into the nature of reading and books...
. . . there are no innocent readers anymore. Each overlays the text with his own perverse view. A reader is the total of all he's read, in addition to all the films and television he's seen. To the information supplied by the author he'll always add his own. And that's where the danger lies . . . (p. 335)
I think speaks not just to books, but how one perceives so much of his or her surrounding world. It reminds me of a similar concept, I think, that came through when reading Stephen Hawking's "The Grand Design", that of how observation of the present changes the past. The idea that nothing is neutral, nothing is static in the ideas we profess and the world we observe. Its changing constantly, and we, through our own perceptions, contribute and cause that change. I think this raises many interesting questions and points for discussion, but the one on my mind right now is...knowing how the information we have affects our perceptions, and thereby affects the world, what duty (if any) are we under to obtain information, and consequently, what information should we be seeking? (how's that for a convoluted question).
As the ancient philosopher Heraclites provides, One cannot step into the same river twice.
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