We read in bed because reading is halfway between life and dreaming our own consciousness in someone elses mind.

In books I have traveled not only to other worlds but into my own. I learned who I was and who I wanted to be what I might aspire to and what I might dare to dream about my world and myself. More powerfully and persuasively than from the shalt nots of the Ten Commandments I learned the difference between good and evil right and wrong. A Wrinkle in Time described that evil that wrong existing in a different dimension from our own. But I felt that I too existed much of the time in a different dimension from everyone else I knew. There was waking and there was sleeping. And then there were books a kind of parallel universe in which anything might happen and frequently did a universe in which I might be a newcomer but was never really a stranger. My real true world. My perfect island.

How is it that a full two centuries after Jane Austen finished her manuscript we come to the world of Pride and Prejudice and find ourselves transcending customs strictures time mores to arrive at a place that educates amuses and enthralls us It is a miracle. We read in bed because reading is halfway between life and dreaming our own consciousness in someone elses mind.