It’s hard to escape the current enthusiasm for reading – and quite right too!

2026 has been declared the National Year of Reading.

The idea is to encourage people to discover – or re-discover – a love for reading and find a place for it in our lives.

Evidently, there is a considerable decline in reading for enjoyment and no doubt the distractions of screens and social media has a great deal to do with this.

As a total bookaholic, it’s hard for me to believe that it’s possible to go through a single day without having a book on the go.

A story to retreat into – on a train, a bus, before sleep, on waking – at any moment, in fact, that is not filled with the other obligations of life.

Writers are always, naturally, readers. And next week I am visiting the Bournemouth Literary Luncheon club to give a talk entitled Avid Reader – Ardent Writer.

And preparing my talk has meant that I have been travelling back decades to think about the books and authors that have shaped my reading and, inevitably, my writing.

My childhood reading was probably very similar to others of my generation.

Ameliaranne and the Green Umbrella and various other tales about the Stiggins family were my initial venture – anyone else remember these stories published back in the 1920s? (and no, I am not THAT old!) I think it was the illustrations that appealed as well as the essential family nature of the tales.

Milly Molly Mandy, The Naughtiest Girl in the School, The Family from One-End Street, Mallory Towers tales, took my attention for a few years, progressing through everything Noel Streatfeild, Pamela Browne, Ruby Ferguson and, more importantly given my obsession with ballet, Lorna Hill wrote.

Of course there was no YA genre as I was growing up. So I made the transition to adult novels via Jean Plaidy, Catherine Cookson and Miss Read among others.

I had arrived!

The whole gamut of literature now awaited me and soon it was Thomas Hardy and Charlotte Bronte suitably interspersed with Lynne Read-Banks, Margaret Drabble, L.P. Hartley, Arnold Bennett and the occasional Somerset Maugham that caught my interest.

An English Literature degree followed by a teaching career – my choice of career dictated by my wish to be allowed to go on reading out of necessity as well as pleasure – naturally further widened my reach.

I won’t go on with the lists – although the members of the Bournemouth Literary Luncheon Club may well be subjected to a few more next week – you get the idea. (although how can I resist mentioning to you Penelope Lively, Anita Brookner, Jane Gardam, Dorothy Whipple …sorry, will stop!)

Reading is simply part of who I am.

And as I think about my life in books, so to speak, it’s clear that the kind of stories and themes I have always enjoyed reflect those I choose to write about.

There’s no science fiction or speculative fiction, rarely crime and never fantasy or horror in my reading choices. In fact, going right back to Amelianne Stiggins, through Milly Molly-Mandy, The Family from One End Street et al, to arrive at my adult fare of Anne Tyler and Anna Quindlan and all of the above, clearly connects themes of family and relationships and the complexities of our domestic lives. I write novels rooted in reality and I choose to read novels with similar concerns.

Do all writers? Possibly. Probably.

This week was, of course, World Book Day and watching numerous primary school children going to school dressed as Princess Pea or Mildred Hubble or Elmer or whoever, made me wonder which character adults would choose if they had to go to work dressed as a protagonist from one of their favourite novels.

It could be most entertaining looking down the train carriage, inspecting the bus stop queue, peering into cars stationary in traffic jams, to guess the book choice of fellow commuters – and possibly reveal a considerable amount about one’s work colleagues!

Perhaps it should become A Thing – some entrepreneurial type should insist that World Book Day next year embraces not only children but adults too.

It could well provide the key to encouraging people to engage once more with books – and ensure that reading really does take off once more for grown ups as well as children!