Mark Thornton from Mostly Books gave a talk called ‘What Reading Makes of Us – The Power of Stories to Shape Our Realities’ to the sixth formers at Abingdon School last year.
Annabel persuaded him to write it up into essay form for Shiny New Books – the literary magazine website she co-edits with several book-blogging friends.
It begins ‘This is my tenth year of being an independent bookseller – the equivalent of thirty years in any other business I reckon. Over time, casual conversations with friends, family and random strangers outside the shop have morphed from the questions like “You’ve started an independent bookshop, are you mad?” to “How on Earth do you survive against Amazon?”.’
The link to Mark’s full piece is here: http://shinynewbooks.co.uk/bookbuzz08/what-reading-makes-of-us-the-power-of-stories-to-shape-our-realities-an-essay/.
Really interesting…. Thank you for sharing. I like the concept of “lapsed reader”. I read in waves – I read a lot on holiday but almost nothing when I’m working. Coincidentally I decided a couple of days ago to try getting back into reading at bedtime. The problem is what. I may pop into the bookshop for some advice.
Excellent article – as above thanks for sharing… although I felt a hint of guilt for reading it from an electronic device.
Abingdon Hall~Turbulent Times indeed.
Thank you for being able to share Mark’s great essay.
Shame Abingdon Hall is in German, else I might have given it a go out of curiousity! 🙂
everybody seems to be trying to appropriate Abingdon nowadays including German authors and Japanese pop bands. 🙂
‘What Reading makes of us?’ ‘A small town 40 minutes away along the A4074 that used to be country town until we napped the position.