posted on 13 Jun 2019

What Reading Means To Me

It means I have been able to walk along the banks of the Mississippi and share The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, trudged Through Russian Snows and braved the deepest jungles with Tarzan the Ape Man. I’ve shared Gulliver’s Travels  and gone in search of King Soloman’s Mines and Treasure Island, journeyed Through the Looking Glass, sought out The Lord of the Flies, caught up with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, jumped in to The Time Machine and chased after The Catcher In the Rye (to no avail).

I can claim to have worked out who committed the Murder on the Orient Express alongside Poirot, faced up to the Hound of the Baskerville’s with Holmes and Watson, solved The Riddle of the Sands and The Thirty-nine Steps and unravelled The Maltese Falcon with Sam Spade.

I’ve been Around the World in Eighty Days, visited Cold Comfort Farm, Wuthering Heights, Middlemarch and Gormenghast, said Goodbye to Berlin then spent some time On the Road, experienced A High Wind in Jamaica and sailed through the Wide Sargasso Sea.

In the cosy embrace of a favourite armchair I have drunk Cider with Rosie, tasted The Grapes of Wrath, dipped in to The Diary of a Nobody, skipped through The Pickwick Papers, declared my Love for Lydia, dreamt of Lolita and learnt why it is wrong To Kill a Mockingbird.

I have shared cocktails with The Great Gatsby, met Jane Eyre, David Copperfield, Anna Karenina, Doctor Zhivago and Tess of the D’Urbervilles, puzzled over The Third Man, and wondered what happened to Rebecca...

What does reading fiction mean to me? – It means I can be whomever I wish, meet anyone I choose to, go wherever I please, at whatever time I want – and still be home in time for tea.

 

Kevin Cowdall

June 2019

First published by Stonehouse Productions (USA) in a Blog by best-selling author, Warren Adler, April 2013