In the last few days, world-renowned scholar Professor Dame Mary Beard, eminent Classicist and Chair of this year’s Adjudicators for the Booker Prize, said in a video broadcast that she ‘absolutely can’t bear it when people say, ‘I really love reading’.’
Here’s what she said in full:
'I cannot bear the phrase “I really love reading” and I cannot bear when I hear on Radio 4 in the morning, “what book first sparked your love of reading?” And I think this is to undermine and underrate reading, that’s why I don’t like the phrase.
I get all kinds of pleasure from reading, I have a passion, in some sense, for reading, but reading is more essential to humanity now than just saying, “oh I really love it,” you know, like I might love golf or something like that.
Reading is about how to be you and how to think about the world, and if we relegate it to the wellbeing section of our lives, we’re really underestimating it. I challenge anybody to say they feel better after they have read Kafka. I don’t believe they have, right? That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be reading Kafka, does it? And some of these books are not, I think, going to make you feel better. They’re going to make you see the world differently, and that’s not about love.'
I posted this on Sunday evening in response to a ‘Bookstagram’ post which commented on Beard’s view:
'As a retired post-primary English teacher, I felt that I was on a crusade to help students see the sheer pleasure of reading- whether that be Shakespeare, classic authors like Dickens, Austen; the Brontës or others, or more modern works. Nothing pleased me more than seeing teenage eyes light up as someone told me l simply had to read The Fault In Our Stars or Wonder or the manga version of Romeo And Juliet.
It was my own love of reading- which came to me from my parents reading to me from a very young age- which led me to study Literature at a very high level. Yes, some books are hard work- depressing- upsetting-infuriating- unpleasant. But I don't think that means it's not ok to love reading.
My name is @TweeterofWit and I love reading...'
I’m currently reading a novel (no. 71 of 2026 for me), which I’m finding deeply infuriating and depressing. It’s been broadly met with rave reviews, including from some of my own close friends. I wouldn’t say that I’m ‘really loving reading’ it, but I do love the fact that it’s making me think deeply. It’s keeping me awake at night, thinking a lot about things like how women sometimes surrender their own agency, opportunities and identity to follow a relationship with a man who treats them badly; how there’s an inbuilt misogyny in so many aspects of Irish society and embedded in much of the Catholic tradition; how absolute selfishness within a relationship can tip almost imperceptibly into coercive control. Thoughts sparked like this are evidence of a high quality of writing: even though I’m not enjoying the novel, like I might enjoy, say, a walk by the sea on a beautiful summer evening, a gentle swim in a peacefully empty pool, or a perfectly chilled glass of rosé – I’m seeing the world differently, my mind is sparking into thought, and I’m being told at home that I’ll be thrown out of the reading group if I start going on like that.
I would most certainly say that ‘I really love reading’. Anyone who visits me at home would notice that there are books in almost every room. My classroom, when I had one, was overflowing – teetering piles of ‘rescue books’,from when the school cleared out its former Library, perched on shelves and counter-tops; sets of class novels; a Complete Works of Shakespeare; that copy of War And Peace that confident fourth-form boys always said they were going to read. Books about Philosophy brushed spines with Carl Hiaasen, Louis Sachar, John Green, Jacqueline Wilson, Michael Bond. There was poetry everywhere: Seamus Heaney of course, but also Ted Hughes, TS Eliot, WH Auden, Wendy Cope, Sylvia Plath, Nick Laird… and there was a small selection of favourites to spark the interest of the A level classes – Jane Smiley, Anne Tyler, Carol Shields, Ann Patchett, Anita Brookner, David Lodge, Jonathan Coe, David Nicholls…
You get the idea.
Mary Beard says that you can’t say you simply ‘really love’ reading like you ‘love golf or something like that’.
Let’s see. As someone who struggles with invasive, chronic, physical pain so much that it ended my teaching career prematurely, within my own limits, I love taking exercise. I love going for walks, and all year around in all but the very worst weather. If the opportunity presents itself, I love doing thirty or forty lengths of a decent swimming pool. I don’t love going to the gym, but I’ll do it if that’s my only option. And I love my weekly Pilates class, even trying to stagger through some of the exercises on my own before breakfast time most days. That’s not to say that I breeze through all this exercise without the slightest problem. I was the person chosen last for the class teams, back in my own schooldays: I was no sportswoman. Sometimes, by the end of a Pilates class, I’ll know I’ve stretched muscles which I’ve only just realised I had, and now they’re telling me they’re sore. Sometimes, the morning after a Pilates class, getting out of bed can feel like that day’s workout. All too often, I’ll forget myself on a coastal or forest path and walk too far, distracted by the beauty all around me; then within a few hours, I’ll remember why I’m supposed to exercise within certain parameters. I’ve never played golf, but I know that golfers have as many bad rounds as they have good ones. That doesn’t mean that they don’t love playing golf; my mornings or evenings of intense pain don’t stop me loving going for walks or for a swim or to a Pilates class.
Reading isn’t life’s only complicated pleasure…
So, Professor Dame Mary Beard, I’m sorry if you can’t bear to read this. I really love reading. I’ll finish that novel that’s making my head hurt at the moment, and I’ll continue to mull over the largely unpleasant thoughts that it’s generated, and I'll love the fact that a book has sparked a firework-like explosion of deep thinking which makes me feel alive. I’ll read something very different next, but I won’t lose my love of reading just because I found 2026’s Novel No.71 rather confronting and challenging.
I’m not ‘relegating reading to the wellbeing section of my life’, although reading most certainly gives me a sense of wellbeing and of being my truest self. I love being challenged by a book – being made to see or think differently, ask myself difficult questions, work hard on understanding new ideas or identify ways a writer might express themselves. I also love recapturing that feeling of being told a story, which is probably my most precious childhood memory. I don’t mind if it hurts. I don’t mind if I get such eye-strain that I have to get my varifocal prescription strengthened yet again. I don’t mind if there is lively disagreement among other readers, friends, reading groups, or reviews. I don’t even mind if I dislike a book so much that I declare a ‘DNF’ – surely the reader’s equivalent of signing a ‘DNR’.
I really love reading. And as one of my absolute favourite literary heroines would put it, ‘And now despise me if you dare.’
No comments:
Post a Comment