I want to talk about books that taught me to read differently — not books that taught me things, but books that changed the activity of reading itself for me. There have been perhaps six of these in my reading life.

The first was Earthsea at age eleven, which taught me that prose could be simple and deep simultaneously and that I didn't need spectacle to feel wonder. The second was Blood Meridian at twenty-four, which taught me that prose could be beautiful about horrifying things and that beauty and horror weren't opposites. The third was Gilead at thirty, which taught me that a novel could exist entirely in the quality of attention it brought to ordinary things.

Each of these books reset a parameter. After each one, I read differently. That's rarer than finding a book excellent. It's the highest thing a book can do.