Reading through the Night

Jane Tompkins, a renowned literature professor and award—winning author, thought she knew what reading was until, struck by a debilitating illness, she finds herself reading day and night because it is all she can do. A lifelong lover of books, she realizes for the first time that if you pay close attention to your reactions as you read, literature can become a path of self—discovery.

Tompkins’s inner journey begins when she becomes captivated unexpectedly by an account of friendship between...