Do you remember the first time? Picking them out, not knowing what to expect, but compelled by an attraction you couldn’t quite define; fumbling awkwardly, not entirely sure how to get into it but finding your way; discovering a pleasure you’d never yet known, and were desperate to find again.
I am, of course, discussing reading for pleasure – a habit that all of us, one hopes, have long since gotten into. There must have been a point at which Young Billy went from his parents trying to force him to read books about trains and tractors to him doing so of his own volition. Or perhaps the transition is smooth, unthinking. One day you’re picking through Biff and Chip because Mrs Brown told you to, the next you’re running with Fantastic Mr Fox because you spotted a Quentin Blake squiggle in the school library and couldn’t walk by without picking it up. Either way, like riding a bike, it is a skill and joy that, once cracked, cannot be forgotten.
Or can it? Just in time for the release of The Odyssey this month, a great panic has started to spread that our age of literacy is collapsing. Across the Atlantic, in The, erm, Atlantic, Rose Horowitch wrote a widely-shared piece on the end of reading. She contends that smartphones, social media, short videos and AI are bringing an end to deep reading, concentration and complex reasoning, undermining our ability to engage with and understand books. Welcome to the post-literary world.
