Editor's Foreword - April 2017

The BBC released a survey earlier this year in which they asked readers to name the books they had lied about having read. You can see the list below. I think I have read around half, as some I may have read in my youth that I’ve forgotten about (more about that later). How many of them have you read? The truth, please!

Having browsed this list I felt quite despondent – and actually annoyed. Why? I think it’s because it exposes the elitism that is sometimes associated with books, something that really gets up my nose.

Why do we feel pressured to read the ‘classics’ or books that everyone else has read? And why do we think the consequences will be so dire if we don’t give the right answer when asked – to the point we feel pressured into lying? If we say we haven’t read a particular book, why are we made to feel inadequate, inferior to or, God forbid, not as intelligent as a person who has read it?

This is a sore point with me. I was accused once of having no credibility as I hadn’t read a particular book by Dickens. This was a bullying comment, but it showed that I am also often judged by what I haven’t read. I love books, but I might not enjoy the books that others have read or think are important to read. I don’t have a desire to read some of the books on the list. But I still want to read others titles on it – one day. I am certainly not going to read a book because somebody else thinks I should. My Taurean stubbornness digs in at this point.

I often think about my high school years, when I was forced to read books. It didn’t instil a love of books in me at the time. None of those books, of which I am sure many appear on this list, were a pleasure for me. I was forced to read books that were irrelevant to my life or the times I was growing up in and, as I struggled to relate, the titles and the contents disappeared from my mind.

Things have changed, and now students read contemporary books that are set in times and places that they can identify with. It’s so important to help kids to acquire a love of reading, rather than forcing them to read something that could discourage them from developing a lifelong love of books.

Some of us enjoy literary fiction; we love the words that a particular author uses and their clever ideas, relishing them and reading some sentences over and over again because they are so well crafted. Others among us enjoy a good pacy romp that keeps us turning the pages far into the night, while others revel in a story of other worlds with amazing fantastical elements. Whatever you read, good for you. I think it’s fabulous that you’re reading and you’re enjoying it. What does it matter if the book you’re reading doesn’t have the stamp of approval of the so-called guardians of literature?

None of us should be judged for what we read, are not interested in reading or haven’t read. Read and let read.

1.   Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
2.   1984 – George Orwell
3.   The Lord of the Rings trilogy – J R R Tolkien
4.   War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
5.   Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
6.   The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Arthur Conan Doyle
7.   To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
8.   David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
9.   Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
10. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
11. Bleak House – Charles Dickens
12. The ‘Harry Potter’ series – J K Rowling
13. Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
14. The Diary of Anne Frank – Anne Frank
15. Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
16. ‘Fifty Shades’ trilogy – E L James
17. And Then There Were None – Agatha Christie
18. The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
19. Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
20. The Catcher in the Rye – J D Salinger