Welcome to my reading-for-pleasure blog

Reading for pleasure

Kia ora koutou and warm Pacific greetings to all across Aotearoa New Zealand ...

Talofa lava, Malo e lelei, Kia orana, Fakaalofa lahi atu, Mālo ni, Ni sa bula vinaka, Noa’ia, Fakatalofa, Kam na mauri, Kia ora.

Each succeeding Awhi Rito is charged with advocating for, modelling, and inspiring reading for pleasure. My advocacy will often be in-person, and I hope, in as many forums and through as much media as possible — communicating reading’s fundamental role in young people’s lives and its contribution to education and wellbeing across a lifetime.

I hope this blog might embody the ‘inspiring’ aspect of the role. I mean to read energetically. I’ll write about that reading here and also offer thoughts on reading’s place across the evolving ages and stages of our lives. I’d like this to be a resource, an encouragement and sometimes a provocation.

I’ve always enjoyed reading widely — non-fiction and fiction in all their guises, including children’s books — though my reading has never been particularly organised unless I’m reading for a distinct project. Like many readers, my progress is part ‘one book leading to another’ — across a writer’s backlist, across a subject area — and part wanton, serendipitous browsing (in libraries, bookshops, journals, on review sites). But I hope to be a little more intentional and exploratory over the next two years — to range across the arc of a reading life, from nursery rhyme to rereading, as it were. I’ll be reading both new publications and books from the long, deep backlist of publishing — those books that have slipped from sight but are pearls waiting to be uncovered by new generations of readers.