Spalding and the Deepings MP Sir John Hayes: Make your New Resolution to support local bookshops
As the year closes, thoughts turn to New Year resolutions. Doubtless, many of these will focus on the weight loss, improved fitness or sacrificing alcohol, tobacco or anything else that impairs improved health
Like most people’s, my resolutions are rarely kept with the abiding certainty with which they were devised. Nevertheless, there is a promise made to myself some (new) years ago, since diligently honoured, which I can recommend without hesitation – my commitment to read two novels each month.
To be entirely accurate, in meeting this two-book target, I have allowed myself the indulgence of including collections of short stories and the occasional biography, though rigorously excluded all the numerous ‘official’ things read to inform my work in Parliament.
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Accordingly, in 2019 I enjoyed, amongst other tomes, The Sea The Sea, Iris Murdoch’s Booker Prize winning account of lost love; the Radetzky March by Joseph Roth – the generational tale of a family during the decline of the Austro-Hungarian Empire; and Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Artist of the Floating World - a haunting account of how, following the Second World War, the Japanese coped with the long, dark shadow cast by the rise and fall of their militarism.
It is said reading ‘broadens the mind’, but, perhaps, more than this it deepens our understanding of what drives and disappoints, what enthrals and entangles people, whenever or wherever they lived. In encountering, through fiction, the triumphs and disasters, lives and loves of our fellow humans, what we share is reinforced, as our personal challenges are put into perspective. In essence, fictional encounters - by enlivening our consciousness - help each of us to better make sense of the world’s twists and turns.
How fortunate then that here in South Holland we can purchase books from excellent local retailers; the splendid Sue Ryder bookshop in the Spalding’s Crescent is celebrating its fifteenth year, whilst, next door, Bookmark continues to grace our area – the service provided there is superb. Nearby, Holbeach’s Bookshop, which raises funds for deserving causes, is a delight.
The wonderful thing about all of them is how they encourage you to linger and learn; to browse before buying. In this way serendipity is served as chance purchases are made. What a contrast with the utilitarian horror of online acquisition, which both robs buying books of the joy of discovery and strips high streets of all that is and eclectic.
So, here is a New Year’s resolution worth keeping – abandon your kindle and boycott Amazon. Instead, shop locally - buying books to enjoy, lend and donate.