The Armchair Reader, Andrew Cafnick
Armchair Reader – Andrea Cafnik
Does anyone else remember the Reader Folders in primary school? Hard backed school folders that held (very delicately) a book in place. I loved my reader, and I loved my Grade 2 teacher who said, “Andrea, it doesn’t matter what you read, as long as you read”.
And thus began a lifelong love affair with books.
To my friends, I am the easiest person to buy a gift for – a book of course! The difficulty comes in which book? Every surface of my house is covered with books.
I’m not talking a few books scattered here and there but piles of beautiful, glorious tomes, volumes of knowledge, great adventures and heartbreaking tales just waiting to be opened and devoured. Books of great history, of achievement, of the everyday. Tales that keep you keep guessing until the very end, or scare you into sleeping with the light on. Memoirs that take you somewhere else in the world and make you feel like you are right there. Books that inspire you to take that trip somewhere exotic, or try a new sport, a new recipe, take up gardening or flying.
That’s what books do – they free your imagination and make you believe you can do anything.
Remember when you were a kid, did you read The Magic Faraway Tree, or Fantastic Five? Did reading The Black Stallion make you want to take up horse riding? It did for me! Remember all those strange children’s books – The Cat in the Hat, Where the Wild Things Are, The Magic Pudding? Beatrix Potter and those magical illustrations. My favourites were always the pop-up books which I am now buying for my niece.
It seems we all read once – what happened? Has TV taken over? Have we forgotten how much fun it is to get into bed with a good book?
Kids know how to immerse themselves in a book – to let the imagination take hold and to read for the pleasure of reading. And that’s what I want to inspire us all do again. To take the time out of a very busy life, a busy day, a busy weekend and simply enjoy a good book.
I’ll let you into a secret – one of my guiltiest of pleasures is to sit down at the dining table with a simple meal of baked beans on toast and thumb my way through the most glorious, picture-laden cookbooks I can find. I read the recipes like they are a story, look at the pictures and imagine what the food would taste like, all the while supping on my baked beans! Heaven on a stick I tell you!
Let me open up the literary world to you – emerging writers and favourite writers with the next biggest, boldest bestseller that everyone is reading! The award winners, the newcomers, the old-timers, competitions and events, literary lunches and interviews. I look forward to sharing this very exciting world with you.
There will be new books to discover and old books to revisit and on occasion, a book to cherish.
Talk soon,
Andrea
