Ah reading, our true escape from the world around us. Sometimes things can be overwhelming, and we can often feel alone in the world, and I truly believe that books are the most effective way of banishing that feeling. Music seems to score and highlight emotions, as do films. They are garish and intrusive.

Books are different. They are portals to other places, other lives. They contain friends and lovers, people who we will never meet, but for whom we care deeply. And even though they are the construct of an author, they are ours. Our own version, pictures in our mind, that we often find hard to articulate to others, but there in lies the magic.

It is world book day, and we live a world increasingly electronic and digital. Wirelessly over the air we receive out media to consume, I am glad books still exist. Books mean that a child in Africa can read Charles Dickens, an adult in China can read 1984 (actually I don’t know if this is true, but the romance of the image makes me hope it is).  People need stories, because they give us hope. They make us look around us in a way that we may not have done other wise.

I could do some blog about the authors I love, Haruki Murakami, Roald Dahl, Cormac McCarthy, but I don’t want to. I want to talk about books in a more general way. Away from authors, and what they are. I remember someone saying once that books are still the most elegant and beautiful way of storing memories and emotions. I totally agree.  I love the smell of them when new, I like the look of them on shelves and in book cases. The action of opening a book, is like opening a door to a parallel world, and I don’t think the action is separate from the effect it has.

I remember being read to by my mother. I would get out of the bath, sit by the radiator while my mum read to me Rumplestiltskin, or Rapunzel. I remember my dad telling me tall tales, pretending to read, but actually them being made up stories from the top of his head.

I get to share in a similar experience with my nephew, reading books with him, watching him get excited about what Meg and Mog are up to. There is a book sale at work, and I am to buy him the complete Peppa Pig series. He is very young. As he gets older I will make sure he gets to read His Dark Materials, or Fantastic Mr Fox, and Adrian Mole.

So today is a good day for you to maybe get home, and before you switch on the telly, pick up that book which means the most to you, flick through it, and think of someone you like, and tomorrow lend them that book. Give something you love to someone else.

I think I might lend either The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, or The Old Man and the Sea...or maybe Sputnik Sweetheart....

-Anand