Tag Archives: reading

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Attention grabbing – the first sentence

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There are two reasons for this postcard today. The first is a course I did looking at the opening lines in children’s literature, and the second is a headline I heard on today’s news.

I’ll start with the headline. This is from The Straits Times: “US military asks for help finding its lost stealth jet” Losing a stealth jet? Of course I want to know happens next.

It’s the same with the first sentence of each of these novels, picked from the bookcase a few minutes ago.

“Wilson sat on the balcony of the Bedford Hotel with his bald pink knees thrust against the ironwork.” The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene

“I discovered the hiding place because the ball ended up there.” The Day Before Happiness by Erri De Luca

“I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice – not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother’s death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.” a prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving

“Two years before leaving home my father said to my mother that I was very ugly.” The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante

“At 7.45 on the morning of November 28, 1931, a young woman in the first stage of labour was handed by her husband into Lismore’s only hackney-car.” Wheels within Wheels – The Making of a Traveller by Dervla Murphy

“There is a fish in the mirror.” This Mournable Body by Tsitsi Dangarembga

For me, each of the above is like a keyhole, giving a glimpse and tempting me to step inside and close the door.

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023

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The places a book can take you

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The more I think about books the more amazing I find them.

Take these two. I haven’t opened them yet but I know their pages will be filled with lines of print, and that as soon as I begin to read them I’ll be transported to places and times of which I know barely anything. I also know that if you picked up the same books you’d travel to the same places, and the worlds you’d find would be similar, but not identical to the ones I find. And both of our discoveries would be different to the ones the authors set out to describe, but we’d all experience an exchange of ideas, and ways of seeing the world.

That’s the strange power of reading. Hopefully we’ll never be without it, nor the time it takes to understand words. Video and voice are tempting, and better suited to our fragmented lives, but it would be such a loss if they drowned out the time it takes to read, to think, to care, and to try to understand where we are heading.

If we lose all that, the only writing left might be the writing on the wall.

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023

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The pleasure of reading

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Reading with children has been one of my greatest pleasures for decades.

At first I read with my own children, but now they are grown, I read with other people’s. I can’t begin to describe the worlds we’ve seen. We are explorers, our way led by libraries.

In the early days of reading with my children it was the illustrations that mattered, each taking us deeper into the stories. Then gradually the pictures vanished from the books we chose. Our imaginations became the artists, and we painted with the print on the page. Now my sons read more than I can ever read, visiting complexities and lives I shall never know. That is their magic, and my pleasure is trying to pass some of that on, although often it is children who return it to me.

They arrive with books that make them laugh, or that frighten them. Books that tell them stuff, or explain. Together we read through them, looking, and unlocking what’s on the page.

The more I do the reading, the more I am in awe of the power of print. No screens, no audio, and yet still the stories unfold.

Perhaps we all need to read a little more. To slow down. To switch off the screens, and the audio. To sit in silence, and turn the pages of a book. It is a kind of oasis, a place shared with others on their own journeys.

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023