The one in which our reader overcomes the obstacles to reading - and finds pleasure therein
When finding the time to read is a challenge, when turning the crisp page of the book in your lap is a longed-for memory, and you are hoping once more for the words to settle and their meaning to coalesce... the books, in this brief selection, offer a single page to be read between daybreak and nightfall. Here are two, tried and tested, from the selection.
Books to be read each day, might help kick-start a daily ritual... until the page becomes the chapter, the short story, the novel. The single article will grow into a collection of essays. There are over 800 titles to choose from in the series of Very Short Introductions and then, there's the Penguin Little Black Classics and the Penguin Archive Collection. Each of these books are thin volumes which would fit a back pocket, a handbag, a manbag - an anchor of words for when you're on the move.
Other good 'ways in' to reading a book can be found in a collection of letters or poetry, a graphic novel, a comic, a film, a TV, or a radio adaptation. An audiobook is simply reading with your ears. Listening can be another door to the literary goldmine.
Many readers say returning once more to re-read a favourite book is the ideal way back to reading. But this time, reading afresh with new eyes, picking up on things your younger self missed. Enjoying the same book once more, your confidence will grow.
Read about what interests you, a memoir, a travelogue, a book by a local author. Don't read what you feel you ought to read. Don't finish a book just because you started it.
Keep a reading diary. Pop along to an author reading from and talking about their book. Ask friends and family - what have they read that they've loved - this way you get to share the experience, to agree... or to disagree.
Research carried out for the National Year of Reading has identified key reasons as to why we might struggle to pick up a book in the first place. We might be distracted by our phones and other screens; we might become disengaged feeling books can offer us nothing, they are boring; or we might feel unconfident in our ability ro read - that books aren't for us. But reading can give us pleasure in escapism, empathy, education, and enrich our understanding. Everything is again, or for the very first time, within reach.
Reading is infectious in the sense that one book or one author will inevitably lead to another. And it is also a given, that one reader can also infect another in much the same way.
So spread the word.
