Why Reading Matters - For Parents
There is a list in the mind of every parent of things that they must, or must not, do for their child. Feed them a rainbow, get them out in the fresh air, get them off screens, make them read. That last one is the one that I bang on about most to clients and students and, for the most part, they all agree. "She used to read all the time" many will say, "but since she got her phone". With boys it's often simply "he just doesn't like reading", a despairing shrug, and on we go.
There was a time when I would be smug about this, blessed as I am with a son who does read. At least he did, until his school completely gave up on fiction (they read a single whole text last year and it was one they had read before) and he became more inclined towards silly comics on his Kindle and science books. He's still a reader but it is becoming harder to encourage him towards the more difficult - but ultimately more satisfying - fiction which, I firmly believe, is what will most successfully prepare him for the world.
There's nothing wrong with non-fiction of course, and there are piles of excellent works on history, politics, society, and nature which I will recommend at the end of this post, but the slow death of fiction as reading material worries me enormously. Firstly because it points to the lack of concentration from which we all now suffer. It takes determination to ignore the siren call of the smartphone and settle into an imaginary world: the real world is so aggressively there these days that fiction feels frivilous and wasteful. Giving over an hour or more of your day to spend with imaginary friends is not generally recommended by those podcast bros who insist on maxxing everything.
Secondly, fewer people reading fiction - particularly older, classic fiction - means that our language is slowly being reduced and homogenised. If you read anything AI generated you'll notice the syntax follows the same sort of pattern each time, and you can be pretty confident you'll never have to reach for a dictionary. But equally, reading this stuff, you'll never read a sentence which bring you to a halt as you reread it, chew it over, say it out loud for the pleasure of its sound. Our vocabulary is shrinking. A lovely young man told me the other day that he had never heard the word "mean" used to suggest that someone was miserly. And then I had to define miserly. He understood "tight" as in "tightfisted" but that was all. He was not a stupid boy at all; he simply lacked synonyms. That horrifying concept of Newspeak that Orwell described in Nineteen Eighty Four flashed across my mind. Double-plus ungood indeed. Does it matter? Well yes, I would argue it absolutely does. As an educator I talk about reading as a job to be done to grow and improve our vocabulary but to do so is to give students the ability to make their words more effective and also, more beautiful. It is satisfying to have precisely the right word to describe a moment, a person, a feeling. When words are nothing more than generic tools to do a job their meanings are quickly worn-down (look at the preponderance of clichés used in public life: how many of them are actually used to mean something, and how many are used to fill in a gap in a sentence?)
Thirdly, and this is probably the argument that most of us feel most keenly but express most infrequently, there is a depth of humanity to a novel or short story which simply can not be achieved on a screen. I should say that I am a dedicated TV watcher. My husband and I spend most evenings watching stuff like The Wire or Slow Horses. Some of it is undoubtedly magnificent art. But cinema and TV are team efforts: directors, writers, actors, set-designers, all make their mark on the finished product (as do test screening audiences but that's for another blog) and the result has to be, to some extent, a compromise. This doesn't make it lesser than fiction but it does make it different. A novel is the product of the inner thoughts of a single person. It is, to my mind, an act of extreme bravery to commit to paper and publication the workings of your soul. For the reader, we are given the opportunity to see different perspectives, to start to understand why people do the otherwise inexplicable things that they do. If we are not religious, we can learn how religion affects the actions and behaviours of others. Graham Greene taught me more about Catholicism than any Religious Education lesson. We are probably not murderers or criminals but fiction can help us see how others may turn to such acts: authors from Dostoevsky to Patricia Highsmith make us understand, if not empathise with, such people. Perhaps we are rich and don't really know why some people are not: Steinbeck and Dickens can help with that. Perhaps we are poor and jealous of those wealthier than us: Fitzgerald or The Forsyth Saga might give an insight into the different problems faced by those with money.
So, fiction reading. It matters. It should be encouraged. It should be done with real books rather than e-readers or on phones (there is science behind this). But while I may have persuaded the adult readership, I appreciate that bringing the next generation on board is going to be harder. It is made particularly difficult by those schools who insist on "meeting the students where they are" rather than encouraging them to rise to high expectations. These are the schools who, when they do teach whole books, choose modern novels with simplistic "accessible" language, with stories that are familiar to their own world view.
We need then to give up on schools (with some commendable exceptions) - they are not coming to save us. This is where we as parents need to step up. We all have different parenting styles, priorities, and different attitudes towards managing our children's development. But whether you favour enforced reading time, bribery, or simply the traditional approach of endless nagging, there is one major thing that you can do to encourage your child to read more.
Read more yourself. I am a reader. Always have been. Used to get through a couple of books every weekend. Always had a paperback in my handbag, always loved a secondhand bookshop. When I moved from place to place as a student and in my early twenties I'd have half a dozen boxes of books, and a single black binbag of clothes to move with me. But even I am finding reading harder these days. I am addicted both to my phone and to the endless horror of the newscycle. I call reading a pleasure and thus feel guilty doing that rather than, for example, doing the washing-up. When I do settle down with a book I am often interrupted. If I sit down with a book at the end of a long day I am liable to fall asleep.
Reading more takes effort at first. It takes time to get back into it if you haven't done it for a while. It feels like a chore and often there will be something nagging at the back of your mind, suggesting that there's something more important that you should be doing. But once you get back into the swing of it, not only do you get to enjoy the fruits of your labour, your child will see you doing it too. Households where reading is normal breed more readers. If there are books on hand, they are more likely to be read. Have rooms which are screen-free. Have periods which are designated as your reading-time. Talk about what you are reading. Pass a great book on to your child when you're finished. Make reading an integral part of your family life. If you really really can't face fiction (I know some people really resist it), then pick up some excellent quality non-fiction. If you're not sure what to read, take a look at the lists below for inspiration. Or, even better, potter down to your local independent bookshop, or secondhand bookshop, and browse. James Marriott, a columnist with The Times recently published a polemic about the decline of reading - it is not a cheerful book, but, on me, it has had the effect of a call to arms. Marriott calls his book The New Dark Ages. I for one will be raging against the dying of the light.
Suggested Reading
The books listed here are simply things that I have read at some point and enjoyed. This is a brief list which I hope will spark some enthusiasm in reading and perhaps help you towards picking up a book again. I would very much like to hear your thoughts on the contents.
Classic
Leo Tolstoy - War and Peace.
Hear me out. I realise starting with an enormous tome of Russian literature might feel a little ambitious but, having finally got round to reading it myself, I have discovered that Tolstoy has been falsely advertised. He is wonderfully easy to read, his characters are charming, and the historical backdrop is fascinating. Most importantly: you do not have to read the whole thing in one go! Read volume one, have a break for a bit, then come back to it. Honestly it is worth it for the simple truths it tells about human nature, love, and war.
Charlotte Brontë - Jane Eyre.
I have a love/hate relationship with this book. It is the story of a young girl of incredible moral courage whose life is pockmarked with such cruelty that on my first reading I hurled the book across the room in righteous fury. But Jane has stayed with me like conscience ever since.
Mary Shelley - Frankenstein.
Rereading this now with a student, I am struck by how timely this book is. Replace the monster with Artificial Intelligence and we have a story which neatly illustrates some of the most intractable problems our society seems to be heading towards. The constant references to other great texts means that it is also a fantastic starting point for readers who want to build their cultural capital and develop their understanding of Western literature.
Oscar Wilde - The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Read this just for its beauty. Wilde was a great wit of course, but I always found that gratingly superficial: this is his more serious, philosophical side, although it is not without humour. Dorian Gray is the story of the picture in the attic, a man so obsessed by his own beauty that he will do anything to keep it. As a metaphor it has seeped into our common language but the book itself has more depth than that, no matter what the critics of the time might have said.
Albert Camus - The Plague.
Camus wrote this story of a town quarantined with plague possibly as an allegory for the French Resistance of the Second World War. It is quite satisfying enough as a story in its own right. It has heroes and villains, ordinary people struggling with extraordinary circumstances, moral dilemmas, cowardice and betrayal, and, of course, a danger epidemic. If you have recovered from the traumas of the Covid period, this is a delicious and very familiar story.
Modern
Polly Clarke - Ocean.
I have only recently discovered Polly Clarke via social media and I honestly do not understand why her books are not constantly at the top of the bestsellers list. Her stories are madly, bravely, beautifully bonkers and her prose drifts into poetry. Ocean tells the story of a woman caught in a bomb blast, and her relationship with her family and the sea. It is breathtakingly lovely.
Olivia Manning - The Balkan Trilogy.
If you enjoy historical fiction, these books are set in Romania before the outbreak of the Second World War. The characters are the shiftless drifters that you might recognise from novels by the likes of Graham Greene, and the backdrop of war adds a menace to young lives which are just finding their place in the world. Poor Yuri is probably my favourite character in a modern novel for years.
Ian McEwan - Lessons.
Apparently it's no longer fashionable to enjoy McEwan and, I have to admit I've not been overfond of some of his more recent work, but this is a powerful, thoughtful, and understated tale of a man trying to make sense of his past. I would also strongly recommend Enduring Love if you enjoy an unreliable narrator and a three-way battle between science, art, and religion.
Yoko Ogawa - The Memory Police.
This is a shocking, mesmerising fable about an island in which things are forgotten. Japanese fiction has a tone so far removed from most British writing that it is like entering an entirely different world. Ogawa captures loss with such tenderness that the cruelty of the story becomes bearable. Really must be read.
Howard Jacobson - Howl.
I love Howard Jacobson. I grew up reading his newspaper columns and always enjoyed his playful, witty language. He was the sort of writer who made me want to write. This is a funny book in many ways but it tells the story of a Jewish man trying to come to terms with the reaction to the massacre of 7th October 2023, when Hamas brutally murdered, raped and kidnapped their way into Israel. It is brave, and honest, and profoundly sad, and yet still made me laugh out loud.
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