World Book Day

Today on my way to university I got really irritated, because I realised I'd missed the opportunity to wear one of my many book themed t-shirts on a day dedicated to books. I live around the corner from a primary school, and upon seeing children dressed as Harry Potter walking down the street I genuinely wondered if I had time to turn around to change. Sadly, a computer lab beckoned, and I'm sat eating lunch in my staple Breton. But I'm still thinking about books. I'm reminiscing over the world book days I spent at school dressed in ridiculous outfits, the embarrassment of sitting on the bus home in elf ears, but secretly loving every second of it.

When I was younger I devoured books. I had nearly two and a half hours on a bus to school every single day, so I had a lot of time to read. I'd been encouraged from when I was tiny, with Dad reading books that I was really far to young for chapter by chapter before I went to sleep at night. I was five years old in the summer of 1997 when Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stones was first published. Dad had picked it up on whim before we went on holiday and I became so obsessed with it that he'd read the whole thing to me within the first few days of the holiday, because I insisted he didn't wait until bedtime. He ended up with a small crowd of children around him reading it on a sunbed by the pool. After that we read The Hobbit together, and on and on it went. I read his Famous Five books, very carefully, as they were second hand when he had them as a child and a little delicate, and all the rest of the Enid Blyton classics. The Roman Mystery books were both and enjoyable and educational, and I hold them almost solely responsible for me passing Latin. As a teenager I used books by Meg Cabot to guide me in my life choices - other than the whole 'princess' thing her characters were so easy to relate to. I didn't have the easiest time at school, for which I hold myself and my inability to react to situations into the right way equally as responsible for as the people who put me in those situations. But books made it so much better for me, I could go into a little world of my own.

These days, I enjoy a wide variety of books, the specifics of which are a post for another day, this one is so wordy already! But I don't have as much time to read. Or I don't think I do. When I think about how much time I spend flopped in front of the TV or browsing the internet, I have plenty of time to read.

As yesterday marked the start of lent, I was thinking about how I could mark lent this year. There's my usual health kick. But I wanted to do something else, and it's often said that you should do something extra during lent as well as giving something up. Although reading more is a bit self centred, I think it'll be good for me to spend a little less time on mindless junk, and a bit more time with my nose in a book.

Maybe you'll try and do the same?