A defence of the value of reading serious literature in offering a reader a rich emotional space for establishing and exploring his or her own inner life in a world where the inner life is too often ignored or denied. This is a book that is not about art for art's sake but art for life's sake. Reading forms a bridge between literature and the world. Literary thinking - when readers become like writers - is the most important thinking humans can do. TheLiterary Agenda is part of a reading revolution - the future of reading in the twenty-first century.