The Power of Reading

The room would be full of patients waiting for their Methadone, sitting there, bored silly, wasting whole afternoons, nothing to do but wait. One of the doctors decided to create a sort of library; the others in the clinic agreed to bring in books, leave them in the waiting room, see if anyone showed an interest. Patients could read while they sat, borrow, or keep - whatever they fancied.

It worked a treat: now, everyone sits and reads: true crime and crime fiction always popular but modern fiction, non-fiction, the classics, all sorts, all appreciated. Some leave with a book tucked under their arm, a sight for sore eyes, says the doctor.

Last week, I watched a programme about recovering addicts in Ireland: brave people who went under the camera, exposing their weaknesses, summoning up such willpower to overcome their particular deadly temptation. One handsome young man sat reading Shantaram in the garden, a book I recognised, full of wild and dangerous exploits. It made me smile as he read tales of another country brought alive in Roberts semi-autobiographical prose.

We read for all kinds of reasons, we read for pleasure, we identify with human experience, we read to escape into another world. For some that is the world of Sense and Sensibility or The Diary of an Edwardian Lady; for others it is wild drug taking, heroin addiction, jail breaks and splashes of madness in India.