A rippling yarn

"Show me the books you have at home and I'll tell you all about your personality!" book dealers affirm with the certainty of their expertise and the rapport they build with customers.

Books (or the lack of them) in a house say a great deal about family life. For it is not just a question of genre or quantity, but also of position that counts. What impressions do you get of books all over the place or meticulously arranged? Or tucked away not to create a mess? Or a splash of coffee table editions that have to be dusted along with the furniture in order to look spruce?

I love the aura of books and more especially the smell. Yes, from the mustiness of old volumes, the whiff of pencil/erasers/disinfectant/ stale air of long gone school days to the uncanny scent of the brand new; at once feral and factory. Each and every one intoxicating in their own special way. There's also a wondrous world to conjure from dog-eared or doodled pages. Better still the thrill of finding something between the pages. And I don't mean the cliché of a love letter read with the sidelined guilt of irresistible curiosity, but something like an old train ticket or the good looks of today's museum receipts. I tend to find bookmarks my mum cuts out for me so creatively from all kinds of greeting cards. She's been doing it for years though now with knit brows as she ponders over the weight of my bookcases.

These are the typical ramblings of a booklover - a tag which has dogged me since day one. And this is precisely why I love reading because my mum used to read to me even before I began to eat my toes and babble and coo to my heart's delight. Memories of snuggling under the blankets listening to fairytales, adventures, and eventually reading a book before going to the land of nod are fresher than what I ate yesterday. Decades on, I still shuteye best if I have immersed myself in just a few pages. When I don't, life's anxieties loom more terrible and depressing.

It's all very well to scoff at escapism that reading offers especially if we're talking fiction. Yet, reading for the joy of it is precisely what takes the chore out of reading. That is, if you're the type to find it a chore. Which brings me to the uphill struggle teachers face at the swarm of depressingly unmotivated and non-reading students. Why it's a struggle brings out blaming fingers pointing to prattling TV sets, the lure of computers or the vapid - even dangerous - fix of game consoles. That children live at home before they start going to school means that their attitude towards reading is coloured (though not fully formed) by how parents feel about books and whether they get down to reading to their children, because children will not bother to pick up a book, unless they are encouraged to do so.

I also feel that gripping fantasy rather than gritty realism or pandering to political correctness should top the list of children's literature. So what if credulity is stretched by coincidence? These are the stories that enthral young readers. If you want children to keep on turning the page to see what happens next, then the pulse must start racing as admiration and loathing tingle the blood. Classics like King Solomon's Mines, The Scarlet Pimpernel and the perennial wonder of Lord of the Rings. As for the contemporary phenomenon of the Harry Potter series, the wizardry stems from the magic of a spellbinding imagination.

Children love to re-create hair-raising plots in their story-telling, especially where they can hog the limelight and triumph against all odds. Give me implausible characters where the values of courage, fortitude, loyalty and insouciance shine rather than the smut of Melvin Burgess' Doing It. Isn't there enough ugliness, brutality and cynicism in our children's world? Is talking dirty the only way to hook teenage readers?

Fantasy does not need to be grubby to help children think about why life really matters. Nor should fiction be the only reading staple for young readers. True stories about people, discoveries and historical events, which have shaped and continue to shape our world open up the marvel of a good story told without rush, yet still sensitive to its tempo.

That's booking your entertainment with no fear of a let down.