There are always good reasons to read, but never more so than during the recent lockdown, when many of us took the opportunity to catch up on our reading. In the last couple of days before the School closed its doors, a heartening and steady stream of staff and students visited the library to stock up on books. Once in lockdown, although our hard copy books were inaccessible, the Library’s digital e-book and audio book collection has been available on an ongoing basis. We also created a ‘Book Nook’ on the portal, providing a range of online reading resources and talks to fill the gap created by not being able to physically visit the library.

Reading everywhere has surged as people have needed ways to occupy the mind while unable to go out and interact with others.

Yvonne Williams, British writer and teacher, created a list of ten reasons to read during lockdown, an edited version of which appears below. Even though the government is now slowly lifting restrictions, her points remain timely.

1. Reading is an escape to a different setting. Teenage fantasy addicts constantly teleport into unknown terrain. Philip Pullman’s The Secret Commonwealth is wonderful for the variety of settings. The quests and escapes are more pleasurably active than the inertia of lockdown.
2. For those of us who like the bigger picture, reading historical novels takes us into political struggles that are fortunately not our own. The past is a comforting country when you don’t have to inhabit it and you know what happened.
3. Reading aloud is a great shared pleasure. Anthony Horowitz’s teenage spy hero Alex Rider [is] a great favourite at bedtime for children. Each chapter[…]so perfectly shaped to introduce a more intense dilemma and end on either a cliff-hanger or a temporary respite.
4. We understand different relationships better through the ways in which we see characters interact. Lyra outsmarts her opponents because Pullman has given her an analytical brain and a vivid imagination – as well as a hefty dose of luck. The machinations and double-cross of courtiers in Henry VIII’s court are superbly played out in Mantel’s vivid prose.
5. Society has come to realise the value of narrative in depicting problems, serving them up as courageous struggles in times when they feel like distant defeats. 
6. The best stories use metaphors. They have figurative and symbolic elements to them that tap into our subconscious, which is why Animal Farm is one of the most enduringly influential political texts. Becoming experienced readers and critics enables us to understand the ways in which metaphorical narratives work so that we can understand how public voices shape their figurative speeches, and thus resist easy compliance. Some public language needs to be questioned. 
7. When the mood all around us is dark we need lighter stories to ease our fears. It’s a time to lose ourselves in Pride and Prejudice rather than 1984.
8. Reading improves literacy levels. There’s a lot to be gained by creating or increasing the reading habit now to tide us over the limitations on our movements. The better children can master the mechanics of reading, the more enjoyable books become, especially as reading speed increases. 
9. The joy of a good book can be shared. Reading groups still meet – online and maybe not as satisfactorily as they did in the physical world. But reading and discussion satisfy the social needs of readers, no matter how introverted they may be.
10. Reading books gives us independence from our families, time to withdraw and recharge our emotional batteries. 

As we ease out of lockdown it is important to remember that reading fiction provides far more than simply a mental escape to another world, it nourishes us in many ways.

References: https://www.tes.com/news/10-reasons-keep-reading-coronavirus-lockdown