One of my prize possessions is a rather tatty but ever so loved copy of ‘The Old man and the Sea’ I love this novel so much. It is so perfect that there is not one page, paragraph or sentence superfluous. I sat down last weekend to read it again. I think some novels get better better as you get older and this is one of those for sure.
I read somewhere that the person who taught you to read is the greatest of benefactors. I love to read more than any other thing. As a child I would spend the winter evenings in the local library. We would get stickers for every book we read and I would spend the whole winter reading all types of books, collecting those stickers, the most I got one year was 37 stickers.
I still find the winter an exciting time to read, a time to connect with new ideas and new problems, we get to enjoy longer nights and darker days and I have learned as I grew older to enjoy the warmth of fire while reading into the wee hours.
To read is to enter their points of view; it is to be an invisible observer of circumstances which might never be realised in one’s own life; it is to meet people and situations exceeding the possible situations in real life. Reading doesn’t only equip you for life but provides you with the means to a greater empathy.
Sea's The Day 