“The idea is that readers don’t come blank to books. Consciously and not, we bring all the biases that come with our nationality, gender, race, class, age. They you layer onto that the status of our health, employment, relationships, not to mention our particular relationship to each book – who gave it to us, where we read it, what books we’ve already read – and as my professor put it, ‘That massive array of spices has as much to do with the flavor of the soup as whatever the cook intended.”
