The meaning of reading

In his book "The Meaning of Reading," Dutch writer Peter Steins, while exploring the details of the worlds of many writers, thinkers, and philosophers, old and new, embarks on a highly sensitive and personal experience, and bitterness, which is his contraction of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis disease, whose symptoms begin with the death of nerve cells that feed the body's muscles, leading to a continuous deterioration in the body's condition and its functions. The book was presented in its Arabic version translated by Egyptian Mohamed Ramadan Hussein, published by "Misr Al-Arabiya" Publishing and Distribution House. Readers in Europe became familiar with it through two editions, the first in Dutch in 2015, and the second in German in 2016, from which the Arabic version was translated. In his desire to understand his illness, Steins embarked on a journey with medical institutions, which he expressed in many articles he wrote in the Dutch newspaper "NRC Handelsblad" simply and cheerfully, taking readers on an enjoyable journey through his readings of European and modern classics, such as "Count of Monte Cristo," "The Decameron," "Aplomov," "The Magic Mountain," and "Memoirs of Hadrian." He made his journey with books and creators a starting point for a reflective state in which he spent time in stages of incapacity, separation, surrender, and pain, which he experienced, as well as the beautiful things he missed due to his deadly disease, which led to his death on August 29, 2016, in Haarlem, northern Netherlands. The book contains 52 short articles about his illness, and above all about his favorite books and authors: Dickens, Alexandre Dumas, Shakespeare, Stevenson, Thomas Mann, Proust, Ovid, Seneca, Szymborska, as well as Jack Brel and Astrid Lindgren. In his touching, joyful, and also humorous reflections, Peter Steins links the deterioration of his physical condition with prominent fictional characters in world stories; during which he, for example, referred to Oscar Wilde's "Picture of Dorian Gray" as he contemplated the changes happening to his body, Kafka's "The Hunger Artist," which talks about the increasing difficulties he suffers while eating, and Andersen's "The Little Mermaid," which had to choose between walking and speaking. This story provided Steins with the suitable alternative for the story of losing his voice.