Tankar om läsning (Thoughts about reading) is an attempt to reconsider the fundamental role of reading in contemporary philosophy and literary criticism, taking as its departure the far reaching description of early reading in Marcel Proust's A la recherce and his essay "Sur la Lecture" but also the enigmatic but very revealing dialogue between the German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer and the French deconstructivist Jacques Derrida. My aim is to show that there are basic affinities between contemporary hermeneutics and deconstruction in the insistence on the impossibility to reach a final and totalizing and reading and on the necessity to supplement the category of meaning with a more material view of the literary text. I discuss three fundamental aspects of any possible concept of reading: time, space and memory. My thesis is that Gadamer's idea of reading as Verweilen can be developed into a theory of re-reading, which makes it possible to view historical re-appropriation, tradition and the concept of the classic in a new light. I discuss the need to develop the idea of the canon from a more productive theory of reading, in line with the hermeneutic premises presented. I also discuss the phenomenon of survival in relation to Proust and Derrida.