“Literature is a textually transmitted disease, normally contracted in childhood.” JANE YOLEN

I wonder how I can begin to explain how much books and reading mean to me. So many people have said it all before me and have said it so much better than I ever could. I once read something written by W. Somerset Maugham in which he expounds that there is nothing admirable about admitting that you cannot go without reading:

'Of course to read in this way is as reprehensible as doping, and I never cease to wonder at the impertinence of great readers who, because they are such, look down on the illiterate. From the standpoint of what eternity is it better to have read a thousand books than to have ploughed a million furrows? Let us admit that reading with us is just a drug that we cannot do without: who of this band does not know the restlessness that attacks him when he has been severed from reading too long, the apprehension and irritability, and the sigh of relief which the sight of a printed page extracts from him? And so let us be no more vainglorious than the poor slaves of the hypodermic needle or the pint-pot.'                                                                   W Somerset Maugham

Admittedly not a terribly complimentary statement but there is an element of truth there – I have to be able to read and the printed word (even in electronic form) has always been, and will always be, a refuge for me: in essence a drug, and no less addictive than a hypodermic filled with opiates.

I have been reading since I first began to recognise the meanings of words. I was a bit of an introvert at school and added to that I was not allowed to go out at weekends (good Portuguese girl and all that) so I did not have many friends. How to fill the hours if not to read? No iPads, no cell phones, not even any talking on the phone – a big, black, clunky thing in the sitting room where the family gathered – and what was available on television was laughable. It was all black and white at the time and my sister and I weren’t allowed to watch many of the programmes (same reasons as for not being allowed to go out). Fun, fun, fun!

With reading there was a limitless access to material – school library and the library at the tennis club where my dad played every weekend – it was private, I could travel to places I had never been, and my social circle expanded exponentially. I loved it.

 I grew into the habit of taking my books with me wherever I went to the extent that my parents tried to ban me from doing when we visited family or friends – they said it was anti-social of me to go an read inside, and so it was and I simply didn’t care. This was one thing I would not allow to be taken from me so I hid the books under the car seat and as soon as was possible, I said I had a sore stomach and went to the bathroom and read there. Bliss!

So it is a no brainer what my favourite subject at school was … and because I was writing British exams (GCSE) there was a separate subject called English Literature where I studied not one novel and one Shakespeare along with some selected poetry, I was allowed to study ten more. And then after all that I was still given a piece of paper in recognition of me achievements. When I went to university it was even better: in my 1^st year English course we studied 22 books – the modern novel, Shakespeare, modern theatre, African literature, Victorian novels and the entire works of Blake and Yeats. Heaven indeed!

Small wonder then that I chose to teach English (after that initial disaster where I taught History for one year). And I have never tired of it. Imagine that, combining my two passions – reading and teaching – and doing them every day.

Many of my students are resistant to studying literature, poetry in particular – okay, I admit, most are reluctant – but that becomes a challenge: to see if I can make even one of them change their mind. And I often do and knowing that I have created a reader is an awesome feeling.  

 With the advent of the electronic reader the big debate began over which was the better - the printed word vs an actual book? I never really cared – words are words wherever they are written and so I have both and the best of both worlds. In fact I have two Kindle readers, the Kindle app on my iPad and on my other tablet, the Kindle app on my phone, and I have a wonderful collection of books in my study (hundreds) with which I will not part. Now I don’t need to hide books under the seat of my car – I can take as many books as I want wherever I go and read at every opportunity. You see, it is an addiction.

I seldom read fewer than three books a week: people often ask how I find the time but it’s not a question of finding the time to read, it is how I find the time to do anything else – it is all about priorities after all.

I have learnt more from books and from reading than I would ever have learnt in any other way. My insights into human nature, my ability to understand sub text and to read between the lines, my awareness of propaganda and when someone is trying to manipulate me, my insights into human nature – all learnt through reading.

Carl Sagan was an American astronomer, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist and author and was responsible for making science popular, even with philistines like me. This extraordinary man of science wrote:

'What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object, made from a tree with flexible parts on which are printed lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.'

I wholeheartedly agree.