HarperCollins Publishers, the US publisher for The Wall Of Night series, is commemorating its 200th anniversary this year. As part of marking the bicentennary, HarperCollins is celebrating reading and readers, writers and our collective shared passion for books through posts linked by the hashtag #WhyIRead and also #hc200.

On 5 May, CEO Brian Murray extended an invitation to all HarperCollins authors “to join the conversation and share your own experiences and passion for reading.”

As an avid reader, as well as a dedicated writer, I am delighted to take up the invitation today and share with you:

Why I Read

From earliest childhood, reading has been one of my favourite pastimes, if not the favourite. I was fortunate to be read to by my parents and to have the opportunity to listen to storytelling via the radio, but quickly progressed to reading and selecting stories for myself. Choosing the first book I ever bought—which although now coverless and decidedly tattered, is still in my possession—remains a vivid memory. And although I played games and sport as a kid and teen, I was also one of those kids that hung out in the library, both at school and in town.

Loving books is reason enough to read, but the question implicit in the hashtag is why I love them so much. My initial response was that I simply love stories: the non-fiction stories that are “real” and the fictional stories that help us to understand them. With a teaspoonful of luck and a dash of hope, they may also assist us to better comprehend ourselves as individuals, societies, and a species.

I also love reading because it’s essentially an active and interactive process. The primary act of creativity may be that of the author, but the imagination of the reader is essential to interpretation of the writer’s creation—and every reader’s vision of the characters and their stories will almost certainly be (at least slightly) different. If anything may be said to be perfect, the wonderful AS Byatt quote from Possession perfectly captures this alchemy of creative interaction:

“Think of this – that the writer wrote alone, and the reader read alone, and they were alone with each other.”

Books also encompass voyages in space-time. Even if I never step beyond my front gate onto Tolkien’s “road that goes ever on”, every book opens a portal into a new world: worlds in which the voyager may encounter landscapes, cultures, history, secrets and revelations, questions and answers—and walk in many different shoes.

Through books, I am always—in the words of John Donne’s famous Meditation XVII—“involved in Mankind.” When reading, I never have to send “to know for whom the bell tolls.” I already know that it tolls, but also rings out, for me.

~ Helen Lowe

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If you would like to share your own #WhyIRead experience then I welcome your comments.

Alternatively, you might like to write a post of your own and join the conversation that has endured through two hundred years, by tagging #WhyIRead.