A significant number of previous studies on extensive reading (ER) claim that the success of an ER program depends on the pleasure students take in reading books. Indeed researchers stress that enjoyment is essential and have found that students continue reading when their affective filters are low (Cho  Krashen, 1994; Krashen, 2004; Sakai  Kanda, 2005). Researchers on motivation point out that learners' personal interest in stories strengthens their intrinsic motivation for reading.
In spite of these arguments, however, students' interest wanes over time from the beginning of the semester. Why do they lose interest in "reading for pleasure" ? The decrease of their interest can be interpreted as their need for a new perspective on the enjoyment of reading. In this paper, I will reconsider the definition of pleasure reading based on reader-response theories: "transaction theory" (Rosenblatt, 1978), "reading as gap-filling" (Iser, 1976/2005) and "point-driven reading" (Vipond  Hunt, 1984). These theories are considered to be effective in letting students find a new aspect of pleasure reading and reviving their interest in reading in that they focus on the interaction between a reader and a literary text as well as educational effects of literature. The implementation of these theories in my ER classes in 2010 and students' reactions to them are also reported.

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