Blog
Let’s get everyone hooked on reading!
What are you looking forward to over the Christmas break? The food, perhaps? The company? The films and TV? The chance for a rest? It’s certainly very appealing, thinking about those days free from the routine of school and work after a busy few months.
Are you going anywhere nice? What about those places where you can go, unfettered by Covid regulations and without the need to lateral flow test first? In fact, these places take next to no time to get to.
- The arctic?
- A tropical jungle in Central America?
- Diagon Ally?
- 1960s Alabama?
- The future?
- 200+ years ago?
I’m referring to the world of reading, of course. A place where no plane, train or bus tickets are required and where only a few short seconds elapse before you’re there, amid the action.
Reading is a great way to broaden one’s own horizons; to stop and think about what it would be like to view the world from someone else’s perspective. What would it be like to live somewhere else, and to have a different economic, social or historic backdrop? What would it be like to be more adventurous and explore a place about which you have no prior knowledge or experience? A place where your imagination is free to roam.
Reading can, in this way, boost our empathy skills, alongside our knowledge of the world in which we live, or the world that as it was in the past. It can help us to understand the journey that we are on as humans, or to consider the way in which we might evolve our lives in years, decades and centuries to come. It helps us to form opinions – after all, we don’t need to agree with everything we read.
I was reminded, while writing this post, of this quote from Dr Seuss’ poem, “Oh, The Places You’ll Go:”
The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.
In the header images above are some opening lines from books that catch the reader’s eye right from the start, and might make you want to find out more.
I’m sure you can find more great opening lines over Christmas, so let us know and we will share them. Let’s get everyone hooked on reading!
