World Book Day

World Book Day.

It's a tricky subject, one we occasionally talk about and one that is still up for discussion. In fact it's one of those deeply contentious issues that tends to dominate middle class dinner parties and every educational establishment up and down the land. Is reading good for you? Should children be taught the rudiments of the English language therefore sparking a lifelong passion for reading?

When I was a kid my mum did her utmost to encourage me to read and take out whole piles of books from our library. At the time of course most kids tend to turn a blind eye to reading because it's either boring, not even vaguely interesting and besides there are all of those hundreds of pages to tackle. Who on earth, we agreed as kids, would want to engage in an activity that required so much mental and emotional attachment? And then there's the small matter of time, the right moment and the most suitable environment in which to read.

A couple of days ago Britain celebrated World Book Day, a genuine festival of literary appreciation designed to get kids interested in the simple joys of reading books. We were reliably informed as kids that if we read constantly, eagerly and consistently from a very early age we would all grow up to be professors, lawyers, doctors, mathematicians and learned members of society.

 But this, certainly for me, seemed like blackmail because if we didn't read, most of us would end up illiterate, stupid, ridiculously underqualified and if you didn't have a million degrees from university you'd also end up unemployed and on the scrapheap for ever more. It was the classic con trick. It was the eating of greens syndrome whereby if you didn't do as you were told, you'd never grow up to be strong and healthy.

After a perhaps shameful reluctance to read when I was very young I now know that in order to keep up with everybody else and remain informed about all things newsworthy and global, you had to sit down in a quiet corner, carefully absorb both the basic plot, narrative and dialogue of a book before becoming totally fascinated by the delicate prose, the rich construction of the story line and the very essence of the book- its thrilling ending.

If World Book Day heightened awareness of anything then it succeeded in persuading a vast majority of kids that books and their wonderfully informative content can change their lives, strongly influencing the direction their lives may take them. Initially, as a child at least, the very thought of walking into a library and picking up two or three books for general perusal seemed horribly daunting.

The usual procedure used to be - and may still be the case- is that you wandered into your local library, browsed at your leisure the multitude of racks, chose the ones that immediately take your notice and then silently handed over your books for stamping. Then you were given that very specific time of three weeks ago to finish off the book which never seemed to be enough. So you muttered impatiently and then knuckled down to the business of reading your books, one after another and then realising that you had to finish them by a certain date, you suddenly realised that if you didn't complete the books you'd suffer the ultimate punishment of a small fine.

Libraries are great are they not? At my local Gants Hill library, with its still magnificent three slender columns outside the building, there was that memorable ticketing system. In retrospect, it almost seems prehistoric now but in those days there were roughly three or four rows of very impressive looking boxes containing innumerable tickets. These were filed away into strictly alphabetical order and to this day I can still see those neatly stacked but compact boxes of tickets.

And yet to this day I'm not sure what eventually lured me into a library on a regular basis. How did I fall for the seductive loveliness of a library, the literary geniuses who were and remain some of the finest story tellers of all time. What did I think I'd ever achieve by reading most of the massive back catalogue of classics from the pen of Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Joseph Conrad, John Galsworthy. Leo Tolstoy, George Orwell and the overwhelming talent of Marcel Proust and his almost biblical Remembrance of Things Past.

In my case I suppose I was simply looking for something to do. My unemployment record would become a source of enormous shame and embarrassment and I had too much time on my hands. After a brief introduction to the classics I started on Somerset Maugham who, in my personal estimation, is still the greatest short story teller of all time.

It wasn't long before I found myself treading that long corridor in Ilford Town Hall, picking up and putting down book after book in the library with the kind of curiosity that should have been with me for many years before. It was now that I took out a couple of cricket books without ever knowing at all why I was doing this. Something did, quite without any explanation at all, spark something in me.

Now I would be drawn to a Secker and Warburg volume by the great early 20th German author Thomas Mann. Here was the biggest book I'd seen up to this point and yet it hooked me instantly. I started some of his most thought provoking novels and found it captivating. There was Mann's lifelong addiction to classical music, orchestras and most hilariously of all, his dog Basha. I'd never seen anything quite like it.

I'm not sure in what order they followed but I felt some strange obligation to read as many classics as I could find. It was, quite literally a voyage of discovery and every so often I would just devour words, form eternally mental impressions of  the characters on these pages, revel in the fluidity of the grammar, the vivid imagery that emanated from the book and ultimately the beneficial effect it was having on my curious and receptive mind.

Joseph Conrad, most notably, was the one author whose sentences and very literary descriptions leapt off the page with an almost athletic agility. Those turbulent tales of sea faring, sailors and beautifully worded paragraphs will, I suspect, always occupy a very special place in my heart. Conrad told me not to be frightened of the written word, not to be afraid of expression and hugely descriptive writing, to go with your gut feeling and just decorate your stories with a gorgeous palette of colours.

Then one day I just happened to be wandering around a WH Smith in Ilford when the lights were switched, a current of electricity surged through me, bells started ringing and one author took my breath away. His name was Thomas Hardy and the front cover was so attractive and well designed that it seemed a crime not to flick through its glorious pages.

Here I'd now discovered an all time literary hero. Here I'd chanced on a thick 1,000 page set of some of Hardy's well known novels. I was just hypnotised and entranced. I had to buy this formidable giant of both 19th and early 20th century literature. You'd be forgiven for thinking that a book with well over 1,000 pages would have anything of real significance inside it. It could be said there were too many long words, the text was far too complicated and it seemed for all the world as though I shouldn't have bothered. But I did and I have to tell you it was the best investment I could have made at the time.

I then proceeded to just read everything I could find by Thomas Hardy. At school my brilliant English teacher had introduced us to Hardy's love poetry. That was it. Tess of the D'Urbevilles, Far From the Madding Crowd and the Woodlanders were just starters on the menu. I devoured, studied and swallowed up some of the most poetically lyrical stories I'd ever seen.

After a lengthy spell in the company of variously Franz Kafka, Rudyard Kipling, George Eliot, James A. Michener, William Faulkner, Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain and Sir Walter Scott I turned my attention to the literary colossus that is Charles Dickens, an English literary great whose novels became so legendary and, in the 20th century, immortalised by the medium of TV and radio that most of us if asked could probably name a few off the top of their head.

When I look back now it almost seems like a dream, something that may have been a figment of my imagination but I can still remember giggling at Martin Chuzzlewitt. Throughout most of Dickens body of work there was a constant thread of social realism, comedy, farce on a number of occasions and above all the sheer absurdities that all of his characters seem to possess. But Dickens splendid use of words, his manipulation of the language to suit his own purpose was a joy to behold.

So it is then that we return to World Book Day, last week acknowledged by all of those book worms who still patronise the likes of Foyles and Waterstones with an avid interest. All books should be treasured and if there are people out there who claim they're not interested in reading and never really read a book then you may have nothing to reproach yourself for.

The fact is that reading can be both surprisingly enlightening and good for the mind. It can raise your eye-brows in the most humorous way and build up a whole series of mental pictures that will always remain clear and lucid in later life. Of course it seems pointless at times but then again maybe reading gives a much broader perspective on life and improves our sum of knowledge in a way we would never have thought possible.

The world of publishing is rather like a concrete jungle now with more budding authors ready to be discovered than ever and those like me who write because they like writing. Go to Facebook and you'll find a thriving community of complete unknowns writing on science fiction, horror, romance, memoir, thriller and tales from their heart.

If World Book Day highlighted anything then it had to be the eye-popping variety and breadth of potential readers out there. Sometimes though I begin to wonder as if I might have been wasting my time by reading so excessively. Does anybody really care how many books you may have read over a lifetime and therefore does it really matter whether you have read War and Peace or 1984 or not? You're never ever going to be tested or indeed feel any different about life as a whole because essentially reading is all about satisfying your curiosity on any subject of your choosing.

Still I have read the likes of Dickens and Hardy and for whatever reason that made me feel proud of myself and happy knowing that such literary brilliance has been read by me. In the greater scheme of things though reading has always been the personal pleasure that it's always been and always will be. Books have featured quite prominently in my life and even if I hadn't picked up a book all those years ago I doubt whether anybody would have minded.

From a personal point of view reading prompted me to use the information I'd acquired from books and helped in the creation of the three books I've written. And to the youngsters out there who may be just as sceptical as I was then you're entitled to your scepticism because that's good. But I'll never forget the Thomas Hardy years. No wonder they named an actor after him.