Broken World Stories

Charles Bukowski, in his poem so you want to be a writer?, gave a laundry list of things to consider if you want to be a writer.
Perhaps there should be such a list for readers.
Not your casual reader of course. Not someone who is perusing a newspaper or diving into a typical ‘best seller’ to kill a few hours. More along the lines of a Lance Manion short story collection.
There are some prerequisites for such an endeavor. A rather impressive imagination and some moral flexibility for starters. To put it another way, some effort is required.
So you want to a reader?