Lewis on books and readers....

Part the Third:
     "Thirdly, the first reading of some literary work is often, to the literary, an experience so momentous that only experiences of love, religion, or bereavement can furnish a standard of comparison.  Their whole consciousness is changed.  They have become what they were not before.  But there is no sign of anything like this among the other sort of readers.  When they have finished the story or the novel, nothing much, or nothing at all, seems to have happened to them."
-C. S. Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism