do you really expect me to read all that hogwash

I have written around 3000 blogs, which have been posted on the BMJ or Guardian websites and on my own website. There is no deception, and, as I heard once at a conference on publication ethics and misconduct, «disclosure is almost a panacea.» Well, I am self-plagiarising, but I’m telling you so. I tell you this so that I won’t be accused of self-plagiarism. The editor has allowed me to put this article together from blogs and articles I have written over the past 12 years. My aim in this article is to make you one of the people who reads every day, preferably for more than an hour. I don’t think that there is any modern English book that has been read by such a high proportion of the population, although the Harry Potter books (which I have not read) might come close. Is it those long nights? I understand that something like one in five Norwegians has read some of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s six-volume autobiography (I’ve read only the first two). Norwegians are, I suspect, more enthusiastic readers. More than half of Britain’s adults do not read for «pleasure» (I don’t like that word because good reading may be painful, but it’s designed to exclude reading for work or duty) in a week, and only one in five reads for pleasure every day. My hope is that you don’t need to be convinced of the magic and beauty of reading, but I fear that it may not have the priority it deserves in your life. Painting and sculpture come close to matching the magic of reading, and music is a serious rival. They are also much more passive activities than reading, and they are pushed at us without us being able to control the pace. I fear that you may take your ability to read for granted and have forgotten how magical it is.įor me reading is more magical than film, theatre, and the spoken word on the radio, which involve seeing and hearing people, something we all do all the time. I can’t read Beowulf, one of the treasures of English literature, and Chaucer is difficult.

Perhaps even you, distinguished reader, struggle to read Shakespeare in English or Proust even in your own language. Despite my attempts to use the plainest English, many millions more would not be able to read this article because their level of literacy is low. By definition you can read if you are reading this, but UNESCO reports that there are around 800 million adults, most of them women, who are illiterate. Reading is a magical activity, more magical than magic tricks. What could be more exciting than that? After 71 years of being me, I’m keen to take every opportunity to know what it’s like to be somebody else. She also says that reading a novel is the closest you can ever come to being in the head of another person. From the words on the page, you must create a picture of the characters, the scene, the sounds, smells, accents, everything. The Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood says that when you sit quietly reading a novel your brain is at its most active. I hope that you don’t think of reading as a passive activity. I elaborate on the benefits of each and recommend a few examples of each genre. Fiction is the next highest form, and I advocate starting each day with 45 minutes reading fiction, 30 minutes non-fiction, and 15 minutes poetry. Poetry is the highest form of writing, but to read nothing but poetry would be akin to drinking nothing but whisky. In this indulgent essay I make the case for reading, arguing that you should read not because it is virtuous but because it is pleasurable and enriching and gives you insights that are not available elsewhere. Michael får pris for språk og formidling.Kari Tove Elvbakken nytt medlem av Michaels redaksjonskomite.

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Do you really expect me to read all that hogwash