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THE ALLEYNIAN 709
OPINION, INTERVIEWS & FEATURES
Cast your mind back to early June, if you can. We had just come out of the grey, time-compressed blur of long days staring at bright screens, binging Netflix till early into the April mornings and obsessively scrolling through the bleak news at every spare moment. With so much separation from real people, and so much time on screens, it was often hard not to feel deflated. It was at this point that I decided to set myself the goal to read 52 books in the remaining months of the year. It’s fair to say that I’m quite a bookish person and proud student librarian (there’s no better therapy than sitting stamping books). I am someone who never turns down a good trip to the library to sit nestled among the heavy shelves, running my fingers across a row of spines. Alas, I have a relatively shaky record in the book- returning department as any librarian (Junior School through Wodehouse) will tell you. In spite of these apparent literary strengths, during the first three months of lockdown I had read just two books. Things clearly needed to change. Reading a novel is unique in its privacy and intimacy, like someone whispering softly in your mind. There is no better way to see the world through others’ eyes; to feel the character’s emotions and live their challenges. It is grounding and humbling to ‘walk a
literature. Furthermore, they allow us to hear the voices of the people who came before us and experience how they really felt.
Through the disturbing twists and turns of a year that not even our finest novelists could have envisaged, Daniel Kamaluddin (Year 10) has turned to literature in order to make sense of the strange world in which we are living Novel
In an effort to reach my target I have been pushed firmly outside of my comfort zone of niche Young Adult romance and modern classics. For example, I was finally coaxed down the graphic novel rabbit hole by a certain tweed-wearing rabbit I will call, for the purpose of this piece, ‘Alexander’. And let’s just say that once you go there, you cannot go back. Graphic novels like MAUS , Fun Home and V for Vendetta do something that the ordinary novel cannot, combining the stirring power of images with direct hard-hitting speech. They seem to lend themselves well to the experiences of people who have had their voices taken from them. They can portray moments of great suffering: events which can’t even begin to be understood with words alone. As the pigeon at the end of Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five notes, ‘Poo-tee-weet?’ There’s that special moment of ecstatic geeky recognition between two readers who have read and loved the same book, where you sit and talk non-stop about every tiny perfect detail of a novel and natter about the characters as if they are old friends and acquaintances.
What we really need is leaders who are willing to be readers
ARTWORK — ALEXANDROS DOUROUKLAKIS (YEAR 13)
mile in [another’s] shoes’, having our own problems thrown into perspective and realising how privileged we are to grow up in this time. Fiction throws light on how we might go about dealing with our own challenges, no matter how tough. As George RR Martin said: ‘a reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads only lives once.’ Beyond the obvious benefits of living many lives (who doesn’t want that?) I would argue that readers often benefit from books when dealing with adversity, and are often more able to empathise with the issues that others face through enhanced emotional intelligence and having more life experiences to draw on. Not to get all ‘Matrixy’, but although these may not be ‘real’ experiences I believe that they are equally valuable, and are as important as our fantasies or dreams. Reading fiction allows us to sneak away momentarily from the grey city streets to a richer world, complete with characters we genuinely care about. Obviously, this relationship with books does come with its own share of heartbreak; for example, after finishing Jodi Picoult’s gut-wrenching novel My Sister’s Keeper , I was reduced to a fit of strangled tears. In all fairness, I had been warned. This challenge has introduced me to such stunning classics of literature as Beloved , Mrs Dalloway , The Bell Jar and Slaughterhouse- Five , which have all permanently altered the way I view the world. As tough as some classics may be to digest, they are incredibly worthwhile; these are books which have shaped and redefined
The truth is that so many students in my year just don’t read. People are either too busy or too consumed by other things like video games and social media (which often only increase stress and anxiety) to take the time to pick up a good book. Part of this is no doubt down to the widespread belief that books are ‘uncool’, ‘boring’ or just for ‘nerds’, or because of the gaping flaws in the DfE’s English curriculum, which struggles to inspire a love of literature which, if carefully nurtured, will last a lifetime. Ultimately, this is about much more than GCSE English. It’s about finding the kind of books that you genuinely enjoy reading; about forming a regular habit of reading even if just for five minutes a day. You don’t need to read the classics, to possess colour-coded bookshelves, to have an opinion on who wrote Shakespeare (it was Shakespeare), or on whether Truman Capote is the true writer of To Kill A Mockingbird (he wasn’t), and you don’t even need to attend Further English. Fiction is for everyone; storytelling is deeply necessary for us as humans. In my view there is no such thing as ‘reading is not for me’; there is only ‘I haven’t found what I am looking for yet’. I encourage you to keep looking, and to keep listening out for recommendations because reading is as magical as the worlds it creates. In a world where facts and truth are under violent threat more than ever, we need readers, regardless of their preferred genre or medium (paperback, hardback or Kindle), because what we really need is leaders who are willing to be readers.
escapes
ARTWORK — JAMES HE (YEAR 11)
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