Yes, one has read; but this is beyond any book.

Her reputation for reading a great deal hung about her like the cloudy envelope of a goddess in an epic.

When I read a novel my imagination starts off at a gallop and leaves the narrator hidden in a cloud of dust; I have to come jogging twenty miles back to the denouement.

It seemed to her at last that she would do well to take a book; formerly, when heavy-hearted, she had been able, with the help of some well-chosen volume, to transfer the seat of consciousness to the organ of pure reason.