I still remember one summer holiday many years ago when reading finally clicked for me. It was The Faraway Tree, yes like many of my generation I was brought up on Enid Blyton, but The Faraway Tree was the first one that I devoured by myself. Reading had been a bit of a struggle, not helped, I suspect by Janet and John books which were surely written to put everyone off reading...?
But once I started reading The Faraway Tree the struggle of reading was left far behind, and I was part of the story, going up that tree and meeting the magical people who lived in it. And that's what a truly good book does - it welcomes you in and the characters become your friends.
And since then I've read many books, and some even envelop me in the same way as I enjoyed that summer, but not all... I've learnt that not every book will be one that I want to live in - but every so often it happens, and when it does it's worth the search: and it's not always the high brow or the classics, right now it's Bridget Jones Beyond all Reason, which is surely a modern day classic. I've loved the films and read the books after the films, and now there's the new book: Bridget Jones Mad about the boy, which is sitting on my bookshelf waiting...
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