Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.
-Sir Richard Steele
My research is focused on the behavior known as creative understanding, which is the in-depth subject of the next chapter. In order to explore the issues involved with creative understanding, a realization of the underlying knowledge system was needed as described in the previous chapter. Before creative understanding can be presented, however, it is necessary to examine the framework in which that behavior is placed in my research--reading. For my work, creative understanding exists in support of overall reading; in fact, I have argued that realistic and robust reading behavior cannot occur without creative understanding. In a similar fashion, though, the reading framework acts to support the creative understanding process. Some aspects of reading directly support the process while others serve as important constraints on the process. Thus, to fully comprehend the creative understanding process, it is important to understand the reading framework in which it is placed. To accomplish this, I will first present an in-depth description of what a supertask is--a fundamental building block of my reading framework. Next, I will overview the three supertasks which are considered ``secondary'' in my framework. This will lead into a discussion of the three ``primary'' supertasks. The chapter then concludes with a brief discussion section.