Reading sometimes feels like learning to dance by shadowing someone who already can. The first steps are without swagger, composure or balance. It’s a little too close to madness—and if not that, then childhood—to always be comfortable.

I’ve never been much of a reader. I remember the force of will it took in primary school to tick off completed titles for the MS Readathon. Each book provoked in me a kind of agony, and I found myself selecting the least taxing titles to nudge my accomplishments beyond a humiliating single digit. It wasn’t until I developed a love of words and, later, sentences, that I was able to cultivate a different and more promising relationship to books. Now, I collect things in them. Not just bookmarks, but attitudes toward the world and toward writing. I read them to collect what they’re freighted with; I freight myself with them in the process.