Reading My Cares Away

During the lockdown, I've remembered that I love to read. Well, that's not true, I didn't forget that I love to read, but I forgot that I love to devour books. I read at a lightning speed, immersing myself in a world, getting totally wrapped up in the characters and the plot and then BAM the book is over and I'm bereft of all that I held dear for the last couple of days. So I start a new book, with a new world and new characters to fall in love with and the cycle continues.

As a child, I would constantly be reading, my nose forever in a book and the greatest gift that could be given to me were WH Smith book tokens. The ability to wander amongst the books, touching the spines, reading the blurbs and spending what I considered a fortune on something indulgent, hardback books, make up some of my best memories.

Top Ender and Dan Jon standing on piles of books

When lockdown started, I had a few books that I'd been given for Christmas to work my way through, as for some reason in the prior three months I'd only managed to read one. I purchased a few more for myself under the guise of buying them for Top Ender and accidentally put myself on the list to read some of the books you can download from the local library and whilst I was on the website also downloaded some audiobooks, which I listened to whilst gardening or queuing to get into the Supermarket.

A few friends and I started swapping books, sending them via the post or dropping them off to each other on our way to work or on our daily walks and some people at work started leaving books in my tray at work that they thought I might want to read based upon conversations we'd had and the fact that every time they saw me I had a different book in my bag.

At one point I even considered bribing one of the Senior Leadership team to open the library up so I could borrow a few extra books from there (I am so going to raise it when I see one of them tomorrow!) and Top Ender swapped books with a friend and suddenly I'd read a load of books in my favourite way and life was just good.

So, I decided that this is something I need to do more of. I need to read, at speed, which means that every spare five minutes I have should be devoted to reading a few pages. Even if I only get to read one book a week, which is not particularly speedy for me, then I've still managed to fill those odd moments of time with something that I love to do and I don't think that is half bad.

Tell me, what kind of reader are you and what are your favourite kinds of books?