I'M sure the well-informed readers of this column don't need reminding that this is Book Week.
To open a book is to open the door into another place, time or situation – to travel through its pages with its characters, sharing their experiences, being entertained, intrigued or repulsed by them and following their story to a satisfying conclusion that leaves us informed, enriched and, maybe, altered.
An hour with a book surely beats swapping banalities with strangers online, since the author (usually) has something worthwhile to say.
Our lives are built on story. What is conversation but an exchange of personal stories?
What is history but 'man – his story'? How else do we learn about class, creed, culture or race?
A recent scientific study in Toronto has discovered that reading fiction helps us understand and empathise with other people's point of view, involves us in the inner lives of characters, giving us ideas about others' emotions and motives and generating interest in cultures that are different from our own.
But, argues the non-reader, that purpose is equally well-served by television or film. I beg to differ.
No adaptation does justice to the original work. The voice of the author is lost. One can enjoy the 'tweaked' version, but the language is never as rich, lyrically descriptive passages are missing, the story filleted of narrative style, minor characters omitted and (unforgivably) the denouement often altered to suit what the adapters perceive as public taste.
Characters don’t look as we imagined them. Dr. Zhivago never resembled Omar Sharif, nor did Lara look like Julie Christie.
I’m not a fan of detective fiction, but Lee Child’s Jack Reacher is a tall gaunt and shabby loner, not the pint-sized, baby-faced Tom Cruise on screen – a perfect example of author integrity sacrificed to box-office demand.
People persuade themselves into believing they've read the book when they've only seen the movie.
You'll search in vain for Mr Darcy's wet shirt scene in Jane Austen's 'Pride and Prejudice'.
Still, better that 'classics for the masses' should give the public some scraped acquaintance with the genius of Dickens, Austen, Galsworthy and Trollope than they should moulder unread in an era of transient drivel.
And as for the Disney-fication of traditional fairytales – don't start me.
I spent many years teaching children to read, waiting for the 'lightbulb moment' when they broke the code and the hieroglyphics on the page suddenly made sense.
It was the most rewarding part of my job. Nurturing the love of reading is equally important.
It's been said, with some truth, that a child who loves books can educate himself.
My father taught me and for the last quarter hour of every school day he read to us.
I've only to close my eyes to be back in that high-windowed, brown-and-cream painted classroom, a miasma of chalk-dust hanging in the air, redolent with school milk and hot bodies – and all of us, boys and girls aged 10 to 14 silent and transfixed as we followed the adventures of John Buchan's hero Richard Hannay.
It was one of the great disappointments of my young life that when I eventually saw the film adaptation of 'The Thirty Nine Steps', it bore very little resemblance to the book.
I took the reading aloud habit into my own classroom. Past pupils recall little I taught them but the stories and the mantra, 'You can fly round the world and into the realms of the imagination without ever leaving your seat.'
To see a child engrossed in a book rather than focused on a screen is a rare pleasure these days.
Many live in book-free homes where every occupant is pre-occupied with technology.
The age at which youngsters are abandoning books drops lower every year. Children model their behavior on that of the adults closest to them.
If the parents aren't booklovers, the door to literary delights may remain closed to them. What a loss to their quality of life. No child should be deprived of the glorious freedom of losing themselves in a book.
