The National Year of Reading and the Misplaced Focus on 'Joy'
The UK's National Year of Reading initiative, a government-led scheme, champions "reading for pleasure" and "the joy of reading." This emphasis is not without merit; research consistently links childhood reading for pleasure to improved educational outcomes and socioeconomic advantages. However, fourteen years after the Department for Education first commissioned a comprehensive report on the subject, reading books for pleasure is in a state of crisis. The primary culprit often cited is the smartphone, with its endless stream of short-term distractions. Recent studies suggest that the mere presence of a smartphone in a room can significantly impair concentration, eroding the mental capacity required to become fully immersed in literature.
Questioning the 'Pleasure' Paradigm
Several aspects of this narrative appear slightly off-kilter. If reading were truly such an immense source of pleasure, wouldn't individuals naturally gravitate towards it without external prompting? There exists a fundamental contradiction between the concept of reading "for pleasure" and the assertion that this activity yields substantial extrinsic benefits, such as enhanced academic attainment. Furthermore, the focus on the act of reading itself overlooks a critical element: the importance of what one chooses to read and how one processes and applies that reading experience.
The current anxiety surrounding smartphones has effectively smoothed over the nuanced doubts and caveats that earlier eras, often wisely, attached to reading. In Jane Austen's Persuasion, the works of Byron, filled with "hopeless agony," are deemed unsuitable reading for a melancholic man. In Northanger Abbey, Austen herself mounts a defence of novel-reading. Similarly, Homer's epics were partially excluded from Plato's Republic due to their depictions of gods engaging in morally questionable behaviour. While no advocate for censorship, it is self-evident that certain books, even if enjoyed, can be harmful—just as excessive time spent online can have detrimental effects.
Reading as Technology, Not Inherent Virtue
Reading, in itself, is not a virtue. It is an action that utilises an evolving set of technologies: the alphabet, writing systems, the codex, paper, the printing press, and now the digital screen. The act of recording information and enabling people to read it is profoundly useful for disseminating knowledge. When a text is fixed—visible, rereadable, and comparable—it unlocks extraordinary intellectual, artistic, social, and political possibilities. One can imagine traditionalists in ancient times, as the Homeric epics were first committed to papyrus, lamenting that the alphabet was destroying a rich oral culture of memory and improvisation.
As a lifelong reader, the author acknowledges the influence of the National Year of Reading's pervasive media presence, prompting a conscious effort in 2026 to prioritise books over phones and television. This reading is done "for pleasure," defined here as outside educational or professional obligations. This habit is a privilege, born from growing up in a family of readers with access to an excellent local library, such as the cherished Newcastle-under-Lyme library.
The Flattening Effect of 'Storytelling' and 'Joy'
The current uncritical reverence for "reading" mirrors the widespread, often simplistic celebration of "storytelling." In her 2014 essay This Narrated Life, author Maria Tumarkin expressed a weariness with the "universal power of storytelling," arguing that packaging human experience into neat narratives can violently flatten life's complex, jagged realities. She contended that not all thinking occurs through storytelling and that the term is an inadequate description of artistic creation and human communication.
A similar reductionism is at play in positioning reading and other threatened cultural activities as inherently "joyful." A recent article by James Murphy, chief executive of the Royal Philharmonic Society, extolled the "joy" of classical music, discussing how it "uplifts or consoles." While true, this is a partial description. Engaging with art—from Guillaume de Machaut to Gustav Mahler to Cassandra Miller—can evoke a far broader emotional spectrum. Playing violin in Brahms's melancholic and nostalgic Symphony No. 3 in an amateur orchestra brought not joy, but a sore neck and days haunted by its intense, wintry phrases. Music can induce dissociation, confusion, anger, or painful memories. Foundational artistic experiences often have little to do with "enjoyment," as exemplified by a childhood viewing of Powell and Pressburger's compellingly strange and perverse film The Red Shoes.
The True, Unsettling Power of Reading
The same complexity applies to reading. Classicist Mary Beard, this year's chair of the Booker prize judges, recently noted on social media that nonfiction seems marginalised in discussions of the National Year of Reading. Absorbing a serious work of history or science often does not fit the simplistic profile of "enjoyment." The last book the author read "for pleasure" was Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz's novel The Passenger. Written rapidly in 1938 by a young Jewish author and set in post-Kristallnacht Berlin, the book was gripping and obsessive. To say it was "enjoyed" would be absurd; it was frequently put down as unbearable, only to be compulsively picked up again. Being plunged into that electrically vivid world rendered pleasure irrelevant. We can, and should, demand more from reading than mere enjoyment. Literature's greatest value often lies in its power to unsettle, challenge, and transform.
