What's in a book?

I am not a sporty person. I can’t run or catch or throw or jump and my participation in school sports

days was excruciating – imagine still hurdling when everyone else has finished the race on the 

track used for the Commonwealth Games where there was nowhere to hide and the rest of the high 

school were in the stands watching  . . .you get the picture. So my haul of trophies and certificates 

for anything athletic from nine schools was precisely zero (don’t think I can count the pity certificate 

for coming second in the high jump one year, when there must have just been two competitors and

I was so shocked when the headmaster read my name out, he had call me so many times, he 

actually asked if I wanted to collect it). Imagine then my delight when my intermediate school held 

a reading competition. Over the 9 months of the school year alternating fiction and non-fiction, the 

person who read the most would win a prize. I had the school’s permission to read every spare minute

I could? That almost made up for that year’s sports day fiasco. 250 books later and the prize was mine.

These days I find it much harder to fit the reading in, amongst the writing, family, day job I have to 

squish it into days that are packed to bursting with places to go, things to do. But in queues, watching 

the dinner, arriving at appointments a few minutes early, waiting in the car to collect kids (torch app is 

very handy), ‘racing’ the youngest to encourage him to read more, it’s amazing how much time I can 

claw back. I was very proud when the youngest was asked at school age 5 what his parents did – 

he wasn’t sure what daddy did but mummy was definitely a reader.

So why a post about reading and not writing? Well, (apologies for another Stephen King quote but the 

man knows his stuff!)

“If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.”

He says it much better than I can, and gives me licence to read, reaches swiftly for my Kindle . . .

Spooky choice of reading material, finishing this 

where Henry VIII met Jane Seymour!