Read.

Read a book. Read it to savour the words, to let them roll over your tongue like a woody single malt. Read a book to understand what the characters were thinking, not just what was enacted for your benefit. Read it for the subtlety of the cues. Read a book to understand the back story. Read it to know the plausibility of the spacecraft's route, rather than just be dazzled watching it shoot off into the stars.

Read to discern, to sift fact from fiction, to go beyond face value. Read to pick at the burr under your flesh, to scratch that itch. Read for logic and reason. Read to topple headlong into a story, so you are left struggling for air as you come up for a breath before diving in again. Read and comfort eat on your day off from work. Read to switch off, read to switch on.

Read under the duvet, read under the bed, read at the table, read standing up. Read a book as you dine out alone. Read on the grass, watching the ants and listening to the birds. Read in the sunlight, and under the stars.

Read a book to relish its smell, to bury your nose in it and fill your lungs with it. Read a book to feel the rough paper under your fingertips, the spine and the binding pleasing to the touch.

Read a book to see on the flyleaf the name of the boy who got it for Christmas, decades before your parents were born. Read it to see the inscription by the woman who treasured it till she died. Read a book to make your own magic, to not be at the mercy of someone else's production values.

Read for the love of the written word. Read to smile a secret smile as you decipher an arcane reference. Read for your own delectation. Read it for the joy of not being a slave to battery life. Read a book clutching it like a lifeline. Read frantically in the last few minutes before your train reaches the station.

Read a book to fall asleep on it so it leaves an imprint on your face. Read it to be aroused. Read it like Pavlov's dog so you can take a dump. Read without regard for your dishevelled clothes. Read with bleary eyes. Read when high and when hung-over. Read when you're ill.

Read a book to learn. Read to imagine. Read a book to seek the oblivion of forgetting, even for a little while. Read it to connect with your ancestors. Read to postpone gratification, stretching out the process as long as you can. Teach your children to read, and so form a bond through which you are connected.

Read to make your heart thump against your ribcage. Read so the bile of terror rises in your mouth.

Read to torture yourself with the sorrows of generations before you. Read to comprehend how history is a Möbius strip.

Read an old book to hold history in your hands. Read to appreciate your own insignificance in the universe. Read to expose bombast and unreason. Read to be a bulwark of sense in this world gone mad. Read to set an example to the next generation. Read a book that is an old friend, that is your link to your own past.

Read because you're alive. Read because you can.