When the thought of reading feels like work
Lockdown is slowly leeching my ability to do things I used to love. Reading is at the top of that list. Intellectually I know that reading is the best way to settle my mind, wind down before going to sleep and escape these eternal four walls. However, at the end of a day of home-schooling, work and pre-schooler wrangling the thought of reading sometimes feels like more work.
So I started reading about reading as a way back to books. My hero Maria Popova, she of Brain Pickings brilliance, published A Velocity of Being – Letters to a young reader with Claudia Zoe Bedrick. It’s a gorgeous tribute to the delights of reading. The entries are from 121 writers, poets, scientists, philosophers, musicians. They write a letter to young readers and accompanying each letter is a graphic from different artists.
The letters are as much (perhaps even more so) for adults as they are for children. They talk about the power of the page for escape and growth and adventure, for a chance to see ourselves and others. They recall early encounters with books and how books have shaped their ideas and lives.
Stoking the fire, Mary Oliver says in her letter; “Words on the page are not a puzzle but a door to many worlds. To write is to delight, to read is to plant the seed of endless excitement.”
When I was really too tired to even read a letter, I just flicked through and looked at the pictures. Each one is by a different artist, so the styles vary but there is a book on almost every page. I’ve realised, as someone who loves books, that even looking at images of books makes me happy.
I love looking at the picture of a girl hidden and lost in a book by my cousin, the very talented printmaker Miriam Cullen and one of my favourite things on Twitter is the anticipation of what new magic the brilliant artist Caroline Magerl has created and posted. Her pictures are brimming with books and a real balm for this book lover.
And after a few nights of reading A velocity of being, I started reading books again. It was impossible not to.
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Nina Cullen 