Favourite books and favourite moments
Favourite books and favourite moments

Favourite books and favourite moments

One more thing… This even­ing I fin­ished read­ing A Wrinkle In Time, by Madeleine L’Engle, out loud to my daugh­ter. MAN, I love that book. Read­ing out loud is so much more emo­tion­al than read­ing in my head. Maybe it’s the act­or in me, but I can­’t just read words when I read out loud. I have to put in all the emo­tion, too. So there I am read­ing out loud as Meg tells Charles Wal­lace that she loves him with all her heart, and begs him to come back to her, dear baby broth­er whom she loves… Tears are run­ning down my cheeks at the same time as they’re run­ning down Meg’s and Charles Wallace’s.…


And a num­ber of years ago, I read Lord of the Rings out loud to my son, and by the end of it, when Sam says, “Well, I’m back.” We both of us were bawl­ing our eyes out.

Yeah, my kids are as old as they are, but damn right I still read out loud to them every night. I treas­ure that time. When they were wee I could­n’t wait until they were old enough for me to read Word to Caesar, by Geof­frey Trease, to them. And The House in Corn­wall, and Treas­ure Island, and all the Great Brain books and all the Madeleine L’Engle books. Now I’m read­ing Nev­er­where by Neil Gai­man, to The Boy, coz he’s old enough for that, and the Girl and I have watched the tv series of Pride and Pre­ju­dice so I can­’t wait to read that to her.  So many books, so little time. There’s a part of me that hopes they nev­er move away from home, coz I’ll miss this dreadfully.

In ten years’ time, some­body remind me of this, ok?