Why read?

Books for me are like mountains for other people. I read them because they’re there.

But sometimes, like the time I am standing up in the office reading out swaths of Don Quixote laughing like a drain only to realise no one is actually listening, or when I don’t know what’s happening in Big Brother / Eastenders / anything, I wonder why I bother. Or rather I wonder how I can make other people bother / justify what I spend a lot of my time doing / explain why books are the sexiest thing on the planet.

(When I’m not reading I spend a lot of time worrying and thinking.)

(And now I’m thinking if you are reading this blog on the Literature Network site you probably already like reading so why am I trying to convince you? Answer: Please print this blog off and post it through your neighbour’s doors on either side of you. Wear a disguise. If they accost you tell them you are the new postman.)

(“Accost”. This is a word I learnt from reading Shakespeare. One-nil to reading already.)

To my relief, that other people think the same as me, that books and reading are the sexiest things since sliced bread etc etc I now know from having recently watched BBC4’s Reading Week.

First off the bat was John Mullen’s ‘How Reading Made Us Modern’. A minor change to the licensing act in 1695 meant that anyone and their pigeon could set themselves up as a publisher and subsequently the eighteenth century heralded the birth of reading as we know it today, with the beginnings of the modern newspaper, magazines, then novels.

Reading became a mark of self-improvement and a measure of social progress. The coffee shop was the place to be seen, newspaper in hand, talking about the world. And of course it was also the time of Samuel Johnson and his dictionary.

(I would have loved to have been alive at this time, a period when all knowledge was knowable.)

Of course the backlash would come later, from Virginia Woolf and her cronies for a start, who didn’t think the ‘masses’ were capable of being educated, (and note her flirtation with eugenics). Books were for the upper classes she thought with their rooms of their own.

So we forget how reading was political. And indeed is political. If you read a lot, you can know a lot, you can make informed decisions, understand things, change them.

The scientist Rita Carter in her documentary ‘Why Reading Matters’ makes this point, reading does something to the brain, it makes connections, teaches us empathy.

We, as humans, weren’t born to read. It is not a sense, touch, smell, sight and so on, and by looking at brain imaging she establishes how reading is not confined to one part of the brain. When we read different sections of the brain fire up, pulses pass between them, links are made.

Whether computer games, watching videos on YouTube have the same effect, she was not sure (I am!), the research has not been done. But it’s something to tell your kids, ‘reading is good for your brain’. Along with spinach it is something to be drummed into them.

The last, and most inspiring, documentary was Children’s Laureate Michael Rosen’s ‘Just Read’. In it Rosen goes into Springwood Primary School in Cardiff and has ten weeks to transform the school into a ‘reading school’ culminating in a reading week.

On going into the school initially it was clear reading was not a priority. Teachers said as part of the national curriculum they didn’t have time to “just read” to the kids, the library was tiny, divided between two corridors, cluttered and unattractive (in comparison to the super duper multi-media computer centre), and when asked the large majority of the kids were hard pushed to think of the last three books they had read. It was clear reading was ‘not cool’.

Rosen set about changing all this. Attractive posters were put up in corridors displaying the favourite books of the teachers, teaching assistants, caretakers and dinner staff. The children had creative writing lessons, culminating in a book featuring poems from all the children. Book sales were organised, as were trips to the library. (“Do I have to sign a contract?”, “How much does it cost?”) A room was found for the school library. It was painted, books were displayed properly, it was opened by Rosen and the kids loved it.

I remember clearly my own reading experiences at primary school, going up to the library, going to book club after school, being read to by my teacher. And I was a member of the Puffin Club. (I am very happy to see that this has been resurrected. If you have any kids or know any join them up now. After you have been round to your neighbours in disguise that is.)

Enough.

A brief history of reading: Once upon a time nobody could read. We taught ourselves signs. Oral stories became written stories. Printing was invented. Reading became political. The Modernist movement made reading deliberately obscure so people would stop reading and become less political. The Post-Modernists took up the baton. Then passed it to advanced capitalism who invented daytime tv and Nintendo DSs. People are subdued and forget that reading is political. Result, advanced capitalism lands itself in an awful mess. Answer, pick up a book. Further result, nirvana.

Supported by Writing East Midlands

Drew Gummerson’s first novel ‘The Lodger’ was published in 2002. It was a finalist in the Lambda Awards in the States. Drew’s latest book ‘Me and Mickie James’ was published by Jonathan Cape in July 2008. Drew is also an award winning short story writer, his short fiction being widely published and featured on Radio 4