Unconventional places to read

On an unforgivingly hot day in July 2016, I sat on the central reservation barrier on the A20, five miles outside Dover, and read almost all of Go Set A Watchman by Harper Lee. Heightened security checks at the border had led to standstill traffic. The car hadn’t moved in twenty minutes. We’d ended up queuing for eighteen hours.

As the barrier’s hot metal burned my legs through my jeans, I was conscious how much literary ground I was covering: I’d read 250 pages in one sitting. If I could do this dehydrated, trapped on a dual carriageway, surely I could do this anywhere, right? Instead of sitting at our desks for hours on end, hoping that any minute now we’ll put down our phones and pick up Proust, let’s shake up our reading habits and take our reading somewhere more adventurous and see where it leads.

Unless you’re an exceptionally well-focused night owl, find a better time to read when you’re more ready to appreciate your book

First of all, we need to stop scheduling reading for times when we know we’ll be too tired to do it in the first place. For three years, I read every night before bed because Nicola Sturgeon said once in an interview that’s what she did no matter how late the hour, and Nicola Sturgeon is exactly the kind of powerful independent woman I want to become. What I actually became was more tired. Reading became a chore at the end of the day when I just wanted to sleep and most of the time, I wasn’t paying attention to what I was reading. Unless you’re an exceptionally well-focused night owl, find a better time to read when you’re more ready to appreciate your book.

Second, stop reading in the bath. I know it’s specific and so many people tell me they do it, but the potential combination of paper and water is already stressing me out even before they tell me they use a Kindle. Surely there must be better places to read.

Finally and perhaps most importantly, get out of the four walls. Student accommodation is definitely not the most conducive place to read: your room is small and utilitarian. There could not be a space more well-designed to suppress creativity and relaxation.

Try to find those moments in the day when your brain is doing nothing else and fill them with reading.

Where then? If we’re not in our rooms, beds or bathtubs, then where?

You don’t have to wait for hours of your day to clear before you have time to read. Reading can be a five-minute activity too. It’s easy to feel like there’s some unwritten social code for places we can and can’t read, but what’s to stop you from reading anywhere you like? Maybe, the next time you’re queueing at the supermarket and the old lady two people in front is taking ages to count out her change, take out a book. If your seminar leader is late, don’t just pull out your phone, use the time to brush up on your notes.

Be creative with your plans. Try to find those moments in the day when your brain is doing nothing else and fill them with reading. You could prop a book against a cereal box when you’re preparing dinner, balance one on the treadmill in the gym, or take your exercise outside and play an audiobook through your headphones – no one said you had to be holding a hardback.

Just think of the amount of reading that could be achieved if we filled all those little, otherwise unoccupied, moments in our lives with books

Try to avoid reading during unpleasant activities. If your morning commute is a source of stress, don’t read on the bus. It’ll only transfer your stress into your reading – ‘Pride and Prejudice and Traffic Jams’ just doesn’t sound as agreeable. Other than that, there really are no rules. Just think of the amount of reading that could be achieved if we filled all those little, otherwise unoccupied, moments in our lives with books. Not only will you be expanding your vocabulary and understanding of the world, but imagine the heads you’ll turn walking down the street half way through Les Misérables. You might walk into a lamppost – and I wouldn’t advise it on Oxford Street – but no one can say you didn’t look intellectually care-free whilst doing it.

There’s nothing to lose and all the knowledge in the world to gain, so let’s start taking books with us everywhere. Be it in the park, pub, bus or even on a night out if you’re feeling brave, the possibilities are endless. Go on, pop a book in your bag, see where you can take it and where it can take you.