Found in a Bookshop

by Stephanie Butland

You know that books are safety and escape and wisdom and peace and the

things that get you through.

Whether they are showing you the best way to prepare mushroom soup, or breaking your heart with someone else’s loss so you can better bear your own, or making you laugh when there is nothing funny in your life, o...

‘Every moment has its pleasures and its hope.’

This is how books work. They take what’s in them, and add what’s in you, and the interface, more often than not, leads to picking up that book every chance you get. Sometimes the power is so great that you’re up all night; sometimes you have to (and yes, I do mean have to) cancel a coffee date so you can get to the end.

Reading should be a pleasure and a joy, an education and a promise, a release and an escape. The books you choose for yourself should never, ever feel like a punishment or a chore.

Not only in what you imagine, but in what you feel. You are allowed to not-love the novel the rest of the world is raving about; you are allowed to cordially loathe your sister’s favourite author. Reading is not a test. Whether or not you love a book is not a matter for debate; and not something you can be persuaded into. Books are the magical everyday that is all your own. Read on, and enjoy.