Today is World Book Day. It is an enormous shame that even today there are hundreds of thousands of people who are still not able to read. In my own County I am told that as many as 30% of adults do not have a basic level of reading ability, they are functionally illiterate. I cannot begin to imagine what it must be like to be in their position.
I read all of the time, it gives me an enormous amount of enjoyment. I always have at least two books on the go, one in English and one in Spanish (I know, very pretentious). At the moment I am reading a compilation of Chekhov short stories and I’m just about to finish El Pajaro Africano by Victor Alma.
I enjoy everything about reading. I like choosing a book, selecting it carefully by its title and its sleeve notes. The more obscure the title the better it is for me. I like the feel of a book, the feel of the dust jacket as I draw my hand over it, as if I can feel the words that are held inside it. I like the creaking of its spine as I open the book for the first time and the smell of the ink upon paper. Old or new, each has its own smell, its own feel and its own character. I like to settle down to read, snuggling into a comfy chair, slipping down into a warm bath or lying down on the sofa. I like the way you build a relationship with a book, they are very tactile things. They are my friends for a few days or a few weeks, they take me on a journey, to places I may never have been and they imprint my mind with memories and emotions that will stay with me forever. I like the thrill that I feel when I start a new story. I like the way that the characters and scenes are painted from me and only for me. Unlike television and film where someone else decides what the story looks like, with a book it is me that ultimately decides how things appear in the privacy of my own mind. I like it when I come to the end of a book, close the cover and reflect on how it finished.
I’m not an abuser of books, you’ll not find me folding down the corners or writing in the margins. I treat books with reverence. When I’ve finished reading I try to stop at the top of the left hand page, at the end of the first paragraph and I always place my bookmark facing the point at which I will start to read again.
I read for pleasure, or at least I think I do as there is a small cloud on my reading horizon. I have formed a habit with my reading by deciding in advance how quickly I need to read a book. I set a target date by which it needs to be completed. It is worse for a library book where the date is already pre-set (it used to be four weeks but has now been reduced to three). I open the book and look to see how many pages it has, divide this by the number of days I have set myself and this is the amount of pages I need to read to make the grade. If I get ahead, I work out the average number of pages left to reach my objective. I started this when reading for me was not a habit but it can making reading a chore, a race to reach a certain point and I feel guilty if I don’t get to where I want to be on that day.
I do read for pleasure, I don’t know what I would do if I couldn’t. It gives me an enormous amount of enjoyment and so I’m going to stop writing now, settle down in my comfy chair, pick up my book where I left off and savour every word.
Thoughts from a Guerrilla Worker 