As a lover of all things word-related, one of my favourite pastimes, of course, is settling down to read a good book. What I love about this experience also, however, is the different ways in which one can come to the act of reading itself. Foremost, at least for me, is the book-you-have-been-saving experience: more often than not this is heralded by the new release of a favoured author’s latest hardback, and might find me either legging it to my nearest bookshop on the release date of the title, or - at least in yonder days before I became a travelling library – see me squatting on my doorstep in anticipation of the postman delivering it from Amazon, having ordered it months in advance. A new A.M. Homes, Paul Auster or Haruki Murakami falling into my clammy paws always has the self-same exhilarating effect - a strange mix of heady anticipation at the potential verbal delights to come, countered by slight hesitancy: for picking the perfect moment to begin such a book is almost as important as the act of reading it itself. Sitting on such a title until that deadline, that appointment, that can’t-be-cancelled meeting has passed is really one of the most difficult things to do, and requires some self-discipline.

As with any of my other favourite authors (Graham Greene, José Saramago – I could go on but I’d better stop here for now…) encountering a new literary world of a well-loved and remembered author-consort is something which, when it comes to dipping a toe in the tide, or hurling myself off the proverbial linguistic cliff, I find the cliff winning out every time – and what a wonderful dash it often is. Engaging in such an encounter requires, above all else, free time, and the opportunity to lend oneself to the world of an author’s characters, their lives and their living. For it is when you are truly submerged in this world of the other I believe, that you are most able to forget, and yet find, some parts of yourself. This is the mark of both a good book and a great author one might take the time to argue, if one wasn’t still engrossed in finishing off the final chapter - perhaps with a cup of tea by one’s side ready to redress the inevitable frisson of bittersweet elation, at the finality of completing such a book.

Meanwhile, an unexpected brush with a never-before-read author can be a whole other revelatory relishing. The accidental encounter, whether by word of mouth, bookswap, “bookcrossing,” a book club, or literally having one thrown at one’s feet (or, in the case of how I came to meet Haruki Murakami’s books – being hit on the head by one falling from a Hong Kong library shelf) invigorates and quickens both the head and the heart. When with it comes the knowledge that this is a literary landscape hitherto untouched – well, something joyful and almost child-like in me begins to jump up and down with expectant excitement. For there is nothing else as the awareness that, at some indefinable future date, you and this new intimate may, once more, meet.

Posted by: Sara Wingate Gray