Found in a Bookshop

by Stephanie Butland

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.

But I somehow feel I don’t have time for the outside world any more.

Then he says, ‘If you had read a book about a reading garden. What would it be like?’ ‘Warm. Comfortable. Good smells. No one knows you’re there. Leaves that move in the wind. A stone wall.’ She opens her eyes.