Perhaps the most fantastical story of the year was not 「Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,」 but 「The Uncommon Reader,」 a novella by Alan Bennett that imagines the queen of English suddenly becoming a voracious reader late in life.

At a time when books appears to be waging a Sisyphean battle against the forces of MySpace, YouTube and reality television, the notion that someone could move so quickly from literary indifference to devouring passion seems, sadly, far-fetched.

But is all hope gone, or will people still be drawn to the literary landscape? And what is it, exactly, that turns someone into a book lover who keeps coming back for more?

There is no empirical answer. If there were, more books would sell as well as the 「Harry Potter」 series or 「The Da Vinci Code.」 The gestation of a true, committed reader is in some ways a magical process, shaped in part by external forces but also by a spark within the imagination. Having parents who read a lot helps, but is no guarantee. Devoted teachers and librarians can also be influential. But despite the proliferation of book groups and literary blogs, reading is ultimately a private act.

「Why people read what they read is a great unknown and personal thing,」 said Sara Nelson, editor in chief of the trade magazine Publishers Weekly.

Junot Diaz, the author of 「The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao,」 vividly recalls stumbling into a mobile library shortly after his family emigrated from the Dominican Republic to New Jersey when he was 6 years old. He checked out a Richard Scarry picture book, a collection of 19th-century American wilderness paintings and a version of Arthur Conan Doyle's 「Sign of Four.」

So what about those three titles turned him into someone who is crazy for books? 「I could create a narrative explaining the creation myth of my reading frenzy,」 Mr. Diaz said. 「But in some ways it's just provisional. I feel like it's a mystery what makes us vulnerable to certain practices and not to others.」

Such caveats aside, there are some clues as to what might transform someone into an enduring reader. 「The Uncommon Reader 」 posits the theory that the right book at the right time can ignite a lifelong habit this is a romantic ideal that persists among many a bibliophile.

「It can be like a drug in a positive way,」 said Daniel Goldin, general manager of the Harry W. Schwartz Book-shops in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 「If you get the book that makes the person fall in love with reading, they want another one.」

But what makes that one book a trigger for continuous reading? For some, it's the discovery that a book's character is like you, or thinks and feels like you. For others, it's not so much identification as the embrace of the Other that draws them into reading. 「It's that excitement of trying to discover that unknown world, 」 said Azar Nafisi, the author of 「Reading Lolita in Tehran,」 the best-selling memoir about a book group in Iran.

The question of whether reading, or reading books in particular, is essential is complicated by the fact that part of what draws people to books can now be found elsewhere.

Readers who want to know they are not alone are finding reflections of themselves in the confessional blogs sprouting across the Internet. And television shows can satisfy the hunger for narrative and richly textured characters.

But books have outlived many death knells. 「I'm much more optimistic than I think most people are,」 Mr. Diaz said. Unlike movies, television and electronic gadgets, he said, 「books don't have billion-dollar publicity behind them. Given the fact that books don't have that, they're not doing a bad job」