Man of his WORDS

DOES ANYONE EVEN READ BOOKS ANYMORE?, COLIN LAMENTS

I’ve just written a new book, though I’m not sure it was worth all the trouble because I’m not sure that people are reading books as much as they used to. Or maybe it’s just the people I’ve been running into lately who’ve made me feel that way.

I was up in Auckland doing publicity for the new book, which is called Sam Hunt: Off the Road, when a young make-up person in the TV studio asked me, “So what are you on the show to talk about?” “I’ve written a book,” I told her. “What’s it about?” she asked.

“It’s about a guy called Sam Hunt. You might not have heard of him.”

“Nah,” she said, “and I don’t read books anyway.”

“Oh well,” I told her as she laid lashings of make-up onto me, “we can talk about the weather.”

Later, sitting stiff-faced, waiting to go off to be interviewed, I was surprised by the sudden arrival of the nationally known TV host Hilary Barry, who came right up to me in a friendly manner and said she’d overheard my conversation in the make-up room and wanted to assure me that not only had she heard of Sam Hunt but that she still actually read books.

Which was some comfort but I was still a little worried for the future of books and whether younger people can be bothered with them anymore. Despite being fed books as regularly as vegetables, not all of my kids turned into regular readers. And I run into evidence all over the place that people aren’t reading books like they used to.

And, even if they want to, they’re often too exhausted at the end of the day to be able to balance a novel in bed for more than a page or two. A book can last my wife a year.

But then, home in Wellington, I was mooching round town with the beloved wife when we happened to pop into Wellington’s enormous central library and found the place teeming with book-mad kids.

I saw one boy with his head so seriously stuck inside a book that he walked right into a shelf, bless him, and I came out of that library feeling much better, though really there is no doubt that people actually aren’t reading books like they used to – or reading newspapers, or even all watching the same shows at the same time on TV anymore. Which leaves you with nothing to talk to strangers about but the unavoidable weather.

Meantime, in much more important matters, my mother’s having her annual breakdown at the approach of Christmas, a terrifying time for any 92-year-old with seven grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren, almost all of whom are my doing.

A rare creature in more ways than I can count here, my mother dislikes shopping at the best of times – and the run-up to Christmas is not the best of times. Well, not for Mum.

“And what about you?” she asked me sternly, with regard to what she could possibly get me for Christmas. “Licorice,” I told her.

“I thought you liked chocolates.” “No, it’s licorice I like. And don’t tell anyone else. Licorice is the last thing anyone needs an oversupply of.”

I’m not sure she was listening.