Quick Reads 2013
This week my blog and personal twitter have been a little quiet. Why? Because I have spent this week volunteering with the fabulous charity Quick Reads.
For those of you who have never heard of Quick Reads, they commission, publish and distribute short books by big-name authors. These novella style books are aimed at the 1 in 6 adults of working age in the UK that struggle with literacy. I will say that again: 1 IN 6! There are numerous reasons for this, a broken or inadequate education, medical reasons such as Attention Deficit Disorder or Alzheimer’s or simply that someone feels they don’t have the time to read an overwhelmingly long book.
I have learnt a lot during these past few days and been confronted with how much I take reading for granted. Reading for me is a relaxing, informative and utterly necessary past time, without it, I am pretty sure I would suffer some sort of mental disorder and I’m not even joking. The fact that other people see reading as a scary, daunting and humiliating subject to be avoided at all costs is devastating. Forget enjoying novels for a moment and think about daily life, reading a menu, a letter, street signs or medication directions, if these things were beyond you, life would be a constant struggle.
Quick Reads understand this and are doing everything they can to get their books to the people that need them most. This includes prisons and crisis shelters, therefore helping people to turn their lives around.
Today sees the release of Quick Reads 2013 collection, featuring Dr Who: The Silurian Gift by Mike Tucker, A Dreadful Murder by Minette Walters, Love is Blind by Cathy Lette, A Sea Change by Veronica Henry, Wrong Time Wrong Place by Simon Kernick and Today Everything Changes by Andy McNab. All the books are available at just £1.
If you’d like to show your support to Quick Reads you can follow them on: