Time to book your escape
BY the time my daughter was eight years old, it was apparent that she was not a reader. I don’t mean she chose not to read and preferred other activities, but rather she couldn’t read.
Words, so easy for most of us to understand and decode, were a jumbled mess to her; a foreign language as mysterious to her eyes as Ancient Greek.
It broke my heart. Not just because of how her lack of reading ability might impact on her general learning – words unlock every subject after all – but the fact that one of life’s greatest pleasures was denied to her.
Books have endless possibilities contained within them; worlds of imagination and exploration. They are a portal to other places and times and people.
For my daughter, though, they were just dead trees.
Eventually, her dyslexia was diagnosed and action taken. It was like finding the key to a locked room.
Now she reads for pleasure. She’s also in her third year of a history degree.
I was thinking about all this as I read a story concerning the author Ann Cleeves who, working with public health experts and doctors, has developed a scheme in the
North East where people with chronic pain or mental health issues can be ‘prescribed’ a reading coach.
The coaches ‘match’ their patients with books – fiction, non-fiction, poetry – as well as fellow readers to help them in their recovery.
Now, fair play to Ann for her vision – the scheme is being hailed as revolutionary. But isn’t it just tapping into what we all secretly know – that the right book can be truly transformational.
I have friends who have run reading schemes in prisons and in care homes and watched as lags and OAPs alike came alive thanks to a single story or poem.
Meanwhile, each year, as a family, we go to a reading of A Christmas Carol. The kids – 20 and 22 – complain they’d sooner be in the pub but they come anyway. They talk about it afterwards like it’s the first time.
Being ‘lost’ in a good read is for some people far more than just getting caught up in a tale and forgetting to put the oven on for tea.
As well as entertaining and educating, books offer hope to the hopeless and companionship to the lonely. They bring insight and joy and release from everyday burdens.
This autumn is set to be a bumper one with hundreds of new titles coming on to the market ahead of Christmas.
I’ve already started a wish list – both for me and to buy for chums.
After all, we talk about ‘escaping’ into a good book and frankly I can’t remember a time when, as a country, we needed that more.