The Art of Reading

Having spent much of 2024 refining my practise as a writer and starting a PhD in literature, I have never thought about words so much. There is definitely an art to writing (one that I am still trying to master) but is there an art to reading? As a child, you learn to read by making sense of shapes and patterns, slowly turning them into something that makes sense. Eventually the words tap into the imaginative part of your brain and slowly you start to appreciate the author’s ability to transport you to different worlds and situations. If you’re very lucky, you will repeat this process over and over again until you can’t ever imagine a time where books weren’t part of your life.

Watching aesthetically curated reading lists appear on social media at the end of 2024, while the posters basked in the glory of their literary consumption, I couldn’t help go into 2025 evaluating my own reading habits. One glance at my bookshelves will not reveal colour coded spines, books that appear in the Guardian’s best books of 2024 or even (I shudder to even type it) books placed on shelves spine first to reveal a more aesthetically pleasing ‘neutral’ look. Instead, you will see books that have been found in junk shops; books that I've impulse bought after seeing a shiny Instagram ad; books that have been recommended by dear friends; books that I've bought after seeing the author give a marvellous talk; books that were purchased with the oh so coveted once a year birthday book voucher. Most are dogeared, some are plain ugly and none will become Goodreads end of year reading stats, but all have earned their place on the shelves.

My reading style is similarly chaotic. Virginia Woolf once wrote "at this late hour of the world's history, books are to be found in almost every room of the house - in the nursery, in the drawing room, in the dining room, in the kitchen." A quick scan of my house will reveal that this in indeed the case. Books are in every single room. More than that though, books are being read in every room. In an attempt to manage reading for my PhD, personal reading and reading for work, I tend to have 3-4 books on the go at the same time. My brain is constantly full of plots weaving in and out of my synapses, waiting to pick up threads where they were left, not from some arbitrary moment in time, but from the room I left them in. In the kitchen I can often be found making dinner with one hand while holding a book in another; I can be putting my children to bed and waiting in the dark for their heavy lids to fall and stay fallen, while finishing up a chapter in a book I left there the previous evening; through some mad, insomnia driven reasoning, I have to be able to have access to a book in order to fall asleep. If there is an art to reading…surely this is not it!

When I read to my children or pupils, I take time over the words, pausing for effect, taking on the would-be-voices of the characters. I become part of the world for them so their job as readers is an easier and more enjoyable one. But do I honour myself with the same luxury? Do I consume books in the same way as emails or reports, for example? Or is it simply the case that through practise, I have become quicker at entering a world and picking up where I left off, no matter what distractions are happening around me? To find answers, I turn once again to Virginia Woolf:

"It is difficult to know how to approach them, to what species each belongs. But if we remember, as we turn to the bookcase, that each of these books was written by a pen which, consciously or unconsciously, tried to trace out a design, avoiding this, accepting that, adventuring the other; if we try to follow the writer in his experiment from the first word to the last, without imposing our design upon him, then we shall have a good chance of getting hold of the right end of the string."

Perhaps that is the true art of reading: leaving the ego at the door and committing to following an author, disciple like from beginning to end. And maybe, for a would-be-writer, the pen will keep moving at the end of the adventure and create something that others in turn will take hold of and trace from beginning to end.

This month’s writing prompt is inspired by the glorious bookshelf. You arrive at someone’s house for the first time and are immediately drawn to the wall of bookshelves in front of you. Write a description of the person based on the books you find on their shelves.

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