How to read more books
I resent hoggish book compilations. They feel worldly and wise. Also, whatever is cooking in their lives, they ’re nowise fully on their own – they always have their books. My mater is one of these life- long harpies of literature, for whom books are a constant companion. She recalls constriction tuberculosis as an eight- bit- old girl, before there was a vaccine, and being shot to spend six months at a convalescent home in Margate, farther than 100 country miles from her family. Books saved me from what would have been intolerable, allowing me to escape from that bed to have adventures in other places and other lives,she says. Grasping compilations hourly look back on their book- reading with fondness. My first recollections of reading are of my late wordless taking me to our expatriate library, and both of us taking out as numerous books as we could carry, says Clare Reynolds, author of the Dates of Reading Selfishly blog. ‘ We didn’t have a wheels so had to make sure we could manage...