Turning The Page
Reader's Digest UK|May 2020
This month, Olly Mann has a confession—he doesn't read books…
Daniel Mitchell
Turning The Page

HERE’S A CONFESSION: I don’t read books. To make such a declaration, in Reader’s Digest of all places, seems sacrilegious. But there you are. No point sugar-coating it. I don’t read books.

Lest you think I’m illiterate, or stupid, I immediately feel I should qualify the statement. I don’t habitually read books. I don’t read books as often as I’d like. When I was at primary school, I loved books! Roald Dahl, mainly (I know everybody says that, because he’s the David Bowie of kids lit, but I really did devour his stuff, cover to cover). When Mum (an actress) was sent an early proof of Matilda so she could audition for the talking book, I was so obsessed that I skived school to read it ahead of my friends.

By age ten, I’d precociously sampled Shakespeare, Dickens and Wilde. Books shaped my world view: I remember Dad suggesting we kill some time while Mum was shopping, and my emotional response—You must never kill time!—was cribbed direct from Tock, the watchdog in Norton Juster’s satirical classic, The Phantom Tollbooth, which I was reading at the time.

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