From the medieval manuscript to the modern best-seller, books have been with us for centuries. Even if, according to some today, they are already ‘obsolete’, many people tending to prefer watching television to reading a novel and turning to Internet rather than an encyclopedia for documentation, there is still a huge market for books.

The national newspapers in most countries carry weekly ‘book pages’ which review large numbers of new publications and give the best-seller lists of works of fiction and non-fiction, in hardback and paperback editions, complete with sales figures. In most Western cities, bookshops are thriving and many are innovating with services such as coffee-shops and comfortable armchairs for browsers.

The yearly literary awards such as the Man Booker prize in the United Kingdom and the Orange Prize for Fiction in the United States are major events which get a great deal of media coverage. Books, it seems, are here to stay, for a while at least.

Is the love of stories an inherent part of human nature? It is certainly inherent in the young child, and parents who encourage it by reading the traditional bed-time story every night will almost certainly be rewarded by seeing their children grow up to be enthusiastic readers themselves. Nowadays there exists a huge (and affordable) collection of beautifully illustrated storybooks for children of pre-school age. From these they can learn an enormous amount. Their awareness, both of themselves and of others, is developed and they are prepared for a whole range of situations and relationships that they will meet with as they grow older. They develop their sense of humour and, in addition, enjoying stories is a very valuable aid to linguistic development and self-expression. But most of all it provides a first contact with the world of the imagination – the magic of the fairy-tale, or of any other story that transports the small listener to another world.

Older children and teenagers tend to get addicted to collections by the same author or on the same themes, and these can be an education in themselves. The classic ‘Swallows and Amazons’ series is still popular and teaches children all they need to know about sailing small boats. Girls often delight in ‘pony stories’ or tales about ballet school or becoming a swimming champion. Each series creates its own little world for the young reader to escape to…and offers through the imagination a vast range of experiences that real life, most of the time, will not provide…

Adults too read to relax and forget about their everyday problems and routine. Love-stories of the Mills and Boon type are of course pure escapism. But perhaps the finest and most valuable form of literature is that which makes us see ourselves–and our world-with new eyes, the sort of story which transforms human experience, ordinary or extraordinary, into Art.

But wherever a reader’s preference lies, he or she, once addicted, cannot imagine a life without books!