Quote Originally Posted by n2ize View Post
isn't the inspiration to read sometimes to spur emotions, such as love, fear, tragedy, heroism as opposed to just acquiring knowledge ? Often i read things that I have read before knowing I won't acquire further knowledge but that it will bring me a sense of wonder, enchantment, fear, suspense, sadness, love, etc. Can it then be said that the knowledge part might be incidental to other motivations for reading books ? Or vice versa ?

What distinguishes reading Beowulf, A tale of 2 Cities, Jane Eyre, Treasure island, from reading "Regular expressions" by O'reilly or "The Perl Cookbook by O'Reilly or "Intro to Website Construction" or "Calculus" by Tom Apostal or "Linear Algebra" by Serge Lang ? Or reading "The History of Colonial America" from the rest ?

Or Spiderman, Batmann, The Hulk, JLA.