The activity of reading, serves as an escape to another world for Natalie, Beth and Andrea particularly when they are reading their favourite genre of romance novels. Natalie articulates:

I'll read a book. If I start reading it and it's a good book, I'll stick with it and I'll read it…the problem is I won't put it down 'til it's all read. I have to read - I'll read for like five hours at a time. My head's pounding and the words are blurry and I can't put the book down. First thing in the morning, I got the book in my hand…And that's why I try to stay away really because they are addicting. Once you pick one up, you can't. You get right into it. You don't want to put it down. Then nothing gets done.

Jill also talks about escaping with a book when she was a child, "when I was growing up I used to love just to sit down, go home after school, sit down, grab a Nancy Drew book and sit there and read it and not put it down until the book was done!" As interested as she is in reading, she states that she feels time pressures and there simply is no longer the time to relax and enjoy a book like she had done when she was growing up.

Reading for Michelle was difficult when she was a child and she was not interested then in books. But now, as an adult, she turns to reading as a support, "And it gets me through…I get very emotional, um, what it's getting me through now is these [books from the 12-step program about living sober]." Doug reveals that both as a child and presently he "didn't like to write. [And] I'm not a reader either." Jane states that she was not much of a reader as a child and at the present time "I don't read very often, maybe oh, read a book maybe, eh, well I start reading a book and it might take me a month to read it." Nevertheless, she still goes regularly to the library to borrow about three books every month. Typically, one romance novel would be for her and she would read this at night, while the other two books would be ones that she could read to her children.