Shakespeare's exquisite imagining belies our total inability to live in the present moment.

I think that's not reading because there's nothing there to be read,

To read in the service of any ideology is not to read at all. The mind's dialogue with itself is not primarily a social reality. All that the Western canon can bring one is the proper use of one's own solitude.

Reviewing bad books is bad for the character – WH Auden

Great literature will insist upon its self-sufficiency in the face of the worthiest causes

How to read "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone"? Why, very quickly, to begin with, and perhaps also to make an end. Why read it? Presumably, if you cannot be persuaded to read anything better, Rowling will have to do.