But for me, as an E.S.L. student from a family of illiterate rice farmers, who saw reading as snobby, or worse, the experience of working through a book, even one as simple as "Where the Wild Things Are," was akin to standing in quicksand, your loved ones corralled at its safe edges, their arms folded in suspicion and doubt as you sink.
One recent afternoon, reading teacher Karen Mallard settled into a kindergarten classroom at Greenbrier Primary School in Chesapeake, Va., as young readers worked through a book about pets.
She has just signed on as spokeswoman for the Math-a-Thon at St . Jude Childrens Research Hospital in Memphis, where children work through a book of math problems, and their friends and family pledge money to the hospital for each problem that is solved.
25 Two low-intensity approaches have been subjected to systematic evaluation: (i) brief treatments in which parents are guided to work through a book that instructs them on how to help their child overcome their difficulties with anxiety ('bibliotherapy') and (ii) treatments delivered via computerised platforms ('e-therapies').
I have yet to write the book I planned to write, yet to write in the period of time I imagined the book would take, yet to sustain one way of working through an entire book.
But once he had left school he discovered a love of literature, working through a cache of books left to the family by his maternal grandfather.
In preparation, I'm working through a stack of relevant books, including Robert Bingham's novel "Lightning on the Sun," which he wrote shortly after his own stint as a reporter for the Daily.
At the time, I was working through questions in a book called Finding Your Own North Star: Claiming the Life You Were Meant to Live, which is based on separating what the author, Martha Beck, calls your essential self from your social self.
As my wife and I know, from working through Levine's book with another couple, the result is not despair, but an enhancement of life.
There was a loving aspect to it: I can remember my father working through math books with him, lesson by lesson, at the big blackboard in the attic.
Rising food and petrol prices crimped consumer spending, but firms in the euro area were contentedly working through order books fattened by resilient export demand.
