This article explores the prevalence and nature of reading in the theory and practice of secondary English teachers.  It sets out to describe and problematise this relationship principally, though not exclusively, through examining the reading autobiographies of student teachers of English; these narratives have been collected over a period of 13 years, the great majority are by female student teachers.  They are read and analysed from a phenomenological perspective both for what they reveal about the development of readers and for the light they throw on the kinds of readers who go on to become English teachers.  Appleyards schema of reading stages is also invoked as a helpful analytical framework.  Overall this evidence is used to suggest that current conceptions of reading held by English teachers may have a somewhat distorting effect on the learning opportunities of students of English and on the nature of the identity of the good student of English.