This column discusses the art of engaging text while reading. To read closely, students must get beyond impressionist reading. They must come to see that simply deciphering words on a page and getting some vague sense of what is there does not translate into substantive learning. Instead, they must learn that to read well is to engage in a self-constructed dialog with the author of a text. Really good reading requires close reading. It requires one to formulate questions and seek answers to those questions as part of the reading process. It requires connecting new ideas to already learned ideas, correcting mistaken ideas when necessary. In other words, close reading requires specific intellectual work on the part of the reader. This column briefly elaborates the nature of this intellectual work.