National Book Day

National Book Day

Back in the days of pen, quill and ink, writing was the one activity we always associated with Victorian authors who would spend countless hours hunched over their davenport desk, carefully inscribing their pearls of wisdom and insight onto pristine pieces of paper and thinking nothing of eventually producing classical masterpieces that would last for ever. Thus, we now have World Book Day. Logical thinking really when you think about it. Today we recognise the sterling efforts of all those eminent letter writers, novelists, short story writers and above all the people who entertained us with memorable pieces of literature that can never be forgotten.

World Book Day is a fully deserved homage to all of those bookish and learned types who love nothing better than the first feel of pages, the leather binding, the fragrant smell of a book and the hypnotic fascination that a book can induce on picking it up from either your local library or a grand old bookshop that has probably been in the same place and the same position on your high street since time immemorial.

Books are our complete escapism into a magical world if you're a child and you just want to stop climbing trees or gallivanting about on your bike which are perfectly acceptable alternatives to reading. But the truth is that books can open up all kinds of mystical worlds that just intrigue and enchant us. When you were a child reading was somehow anathema, a horrible and totally disagreeable pastime from which no good would ever come.

Libraries of course are our first ports of call, marvellously educational and intellectually stimulating buildings where silence is demanded and respect taken for granted. Besides how often are we told to keep quiet at all times because there are people reading important documents, heavy reference books on whatever subject and then perhaps writing down notes or even chapters of their own book? Needless to say they are places of quiet contemplation, thinking and mulling over private thoughts about the world around us, homework for school children perhaps or just browsing curiously the hundreds of shelves in the library itself.

For some of us though reading became something of an infuriating chore, your mum desperately imploring you to go to the library and reading as much as you could because it was good for you, beneficial to your developing mind and all knowledge was vital. Books had compelling stories, tales of derring do, adventure, happy ever tales that would send you off to sleep with a warm glow. Books transported you some fabulous palace where rich emperors lived, romantic lands where parakeets sung from tropical and exotic hibiscus bushes and where jasmine scented corners of stunning gardens could be found far away.

And yet it seemed to take ages to acknowledge the importance of reading if only because as kids we have the kind of boredom threshold that leads to mind wander over all the place. We know it's good to read words and sentences since of course they are our essential passport into locations where reality can be suspended harmlessly and the imagination given full rein. If only we'd listened to the shrewd advice of our parents then surely we'd be grateful. But we did eventually so perhaps it was a case of better late than never.

After emerging from secondary school with nothing to equip myself for the outside world you found yourself at a complete loss. You knew that English at school had always been your favourite subject and even then you thought you were pretty much a dab hand at it. It was the spoken and written word that held you enthralled from an early age. We used to read Thomas Hardy's love poems as a class and the Lord of the Flies as a class. At the time it just felt as if part of the lesson's standard procedures. By hearing and listening to other kids reading from the book, we too could learn about the pleasures of reading for fun.

It was only by chance that you found yourself to my local library in Ilford, Essex. At first tentatively you quietly went about your business of looking at the classics, sport and history sections. You flicked through the pages desultorily, wondering what on earth you were doing. Then, as if in idle curiosity, you pulled out a thick volume of works by the great author Thomas Mann who had written the celebrated Death in Venice, a novel that would make the easy transition to the cinema screen.

Having finished Thomas Mann you became entranced by the descriptive words on the page, the quality of the writing, the development of complex plots, dialogue, nouns, pronouns, verbs and adverbs. You marvelled at the inimitable Charles Dickens, the greatest novelist and story teller of all time and the way Dickens classic tomes would occupy almost the entire length of a shelf. It was the finest learning curve you could ever have hoped for.

In years to come you would discover the conventional rags to riches story that had underpinned Dicken's rise to literary greatness. You were told that Dickens father John had been sent to prison, that his son Charles had bailed him out of prison, that as a very early writer, Dickens would walk the streets of Covent Garden at midnight, absorbing the flavours, the aromas, the sights and sounds of London. He would notice the last of the costermongers and barrow boys yelling across to their mates. He would note quirks, mannerisms, changes of mood and weather, the people shuffling and then running back to home for a quick hot toddy drink and then sleep.

Dickens taught me subconsciously how to write but not to write to like him. You knew you could never  aspire to emulate his brilliant prose, the warmly lyrical stories and characters that just seemed to reach the surface of his mind before spilling out onto the written page quite organically. But the novels seeped into my head and the images would multiply prolifically. Eventually you would complete most of the big novels such as David Copperfield, the Pickwick Papers, Dombey and Son, Martin Chuzzlewit, a Tale Of Two Cities, Oliver Twist, Hard Times and Barnaby Rudge. It was one of your most exciting journeys to the Olympic heights of literary excellence.

And then there was Thomas Hardy. Now Thomas Hardy was a life changing moment for yours truly, a wondrous, a beautifully descriptive wordsmith who would conjure up some of the most glorious illustrations of the English countryside, painting pictures with words which sung quite melodiously, the contours of his native Dorset farmland, the tragedies and hardships of those people for whom everyday was a continuous struggle to put food and drink on the table.

For somebody who had little or nothing of any academic value or significance to show any prospective employer this did feel like a constructive way of spending huge swathes of unemployed time. You immersed yourself in Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy, Franz Kafka and Joseph Conrad, Marcel Proust, Leo Tolstoy, Henry James, CS Forrester's Hornblower, George Orwell and DH Lawrence, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Mark Twain, Alistair Mclean, Anthony Trollope's political novels, HG Wells and too many others to mention that may escape me for the moment.

In recent years you have caught with F. Scott Fitzgerald and GK Chesterton and of course the innumerable sports books that remain an enduring interest. You have suddenly begun to realise that although reading may not be essential for some, it can still grip your attention, it can still be thought provoking and you can become emotionally involved in stories you wouldn't normally have expected to find or hear about in your everyday life. So go on pick up a book. It may just be just your hour or two, an opportunity to explore some nuggets of information that might make you laugh, smile or giggle. Happy World Book Day everybody.