ABSTRACT
The question must have been put to me a hundred times in a dozen different ways – What happens when you read? How do readers read? or What is reading? And I’ve never found a satisfactory response. But I’ve never persuaded anyone that the question is not a good one, though I’ve always had great difficulty understanding what exactly is meant. Now I want to look at the entire matter in detail, the question and a possible answer. I shall also take the opportunity to discuss a pair of related recurrent questions: What is comprehension? And that veritable chestnut, What is meaning?
