Exciting and essential…

Browsing in my local charity shop at the tail-end of last year, I came across ‘Books are exciting’:

It is one of a series of Ladybird Key Words books designed back in the 1960s to make “every child eager to read”. Fast-forward 60 years or so and the number of children regularly picking up books is sadly at an all time low – according to the National Literacy Trust, only one in three eight-to-18-year-olds enjoy reading in their spare time.

Despite this downbeat stat, books are indeed exciting. And essential – not least because they’re a great way to keep our brains firing on all cylinders in a world where, if we’re not careful, AI will create what Sol Rashidi has called ‘intellectual atrophy’.

So in this National Year of Reading, my new year’s resolution is to read more and more books, and to encourage everyone around me to read more, too.