Political opinion with Beccy Cooper MP: For the love of reading

It’s great news that a new bookshop is to open shortly in Warwick Street, bringing an exciting new independent business to our town centre and promoting all the benefits that a love of reading can bring.

Tilly’s Bookshop will feature a fiction-first selection of books for both adults and children with old favourites, new releases and books you might not have come across before. They are also b planning author events and book clubs and will give a brilliant boost to the options on our high street, especially as we enter that all important run up to Christmas.

I am part of a book club here in Worthing West, and despite my often hectic MP schedule, I try hard to finish each agreed book in time for our regular meetings.  The benefits are clear, firstly in making me set aside the time to get together with friends and share our various reactions, and in setting a regular deadline to finish a book with no excuses! I really can’t recommend joining a book club enough, for firing up the grey cells, giving confidence to those (unlike me!) who may not be quite so used to airing their opinions, and as an enjoyable and rewarding social activity in itself.

Let’s not also forget that this is the UK’s National Year of Reading, a nationwide campaign led by the Department for Education and the National Literacy Trust. It’s about reversing the decline in reading for pleasure brought on by our screens and busy lifestyles, by encouraging people of all ages to read more. With the campaign theme “Go All In”, it urges everyone to re-discover reading through things they already love, whether that be sport, music, gaming, food, films or whatever our passions or interests may be.

The campaign also encourages parents, carers and children to share a book for just ten minutes a day. The positives in setting aside just that short space of time are enormous: improving language skills as children learn new words and develop their vocabulary, encouraging them to think, ask questions and understand new ideas, sparking their imagination and creativity, and supporting their schoolwork, all while helping them feel loved and valued. And crucially, encouraging them to choose books for pleasure themselves as they grow older, passing the love of reading on to future generations.

It also aims to encourage more of us to visit libraries, with the aim of increasing library use by one million people and recruiting 100,000 active volunteers this year. We are blessed with a fantastic library here in Worthing, a welcoming space for people of all ages, offering a huge range of services and activities and I would strongly recommend anyone who hasn’t visited in a while to stop by and make the most of this brilliant – and cost-free – community resource.

Whatever your taste, whether fiction, non-fiction, poetry, magazines, graphic novels or comics, let’s be sure to spread the love of reading as widely as we can.

As always, you can contact me at [email protected].