Summer reading, and teaching kids a love of books

It's the summer holidays at last - time to read a book, read aloud and share books...

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... 

The joy of reading

Being left to my own devices over the weekend  meant that I spent a large part of it lost in a book, which was wonderful... I finished the second half of Bridget Jones's Diary - oh the joy of reading half a book at one go, so often I only have time to read books in small chunks, and even on holiday I can end up too busy doing activities to just disappear into a book for long at a time. So the upshot is, that I now need the second book in the series, even though I have the film on DVD I'm still looking forward to reading the book, and then I'll be ready for the new book in the series, I'm still hoping it'll come out in paperback soon, but might just have to get the hardback version.

Luckily, thanks to getting distracted by buying instead of merchandising last week, I had another two books to choose from, and am now reading A Family Affair by Mary Campisi. I like to read a big cross section of books, and this is just one I came across with an interesting plot - and at 60 pages in it's certainly unfolding with lots of intriguing questions to answer...

I read in an article recently about how good reading is for the brain, keeping it active and agile (no great surprise there...) - so really my weekend of relaxing and reading was as good as going to the gym - for my mind at least...