Readers, texts, and readings can take unpredictable and seemingly tangential detours that educators might find undesirable and difficult to control. Readers can stray far from the text to seek out desired meanings. In the same way, media outlets can reappropriate favorite literary fictions in ways that can perturb educators and readers alike. Using the theories of an ecology of reading and the rhizome, together with evidence from an adult book club comprised of graduate students studying literacy education, this conceptual piece argues that undisciplined relations among readers, texts, and readings are admittedly tangential but nonetheless vital to the process of meaning-making.