If you’re anything like me, one of your favorite reasons to read is for the story. Not for the character development and interaction. Not because of the descriptive, emotive powers of the writer. Not because of deep, literary meaning hidden beneath layers of metaphor. (Even though those are all good things.) No … it’s because you want to know what happens next?

Or, um, is it just me?

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No, it’s not just you! With fiction, it’s the story that pulls me along, and the other features accrue like interest on a wise investment. Over the last year, I’ve been on a mission to rediscover that experience of reading not just for duty or requirement or practical need for information, but for pleasure, so I’ve not given the books I read much slack; they have to win me over in the first 50 pages (max), or they go back on the shelf. It’s worked, and now I find myself reaching for more challenging books.

I’ve also discovered I’m capable not just of surviving, but of loving, nonfiction and poetry. In these genres, it’s not the plot that pulls me along. But that urgent “What happens next?” is still very much there: where is this argument leading? What luscious turn of phrase or image will resolve the tension of this stanza? So this year has been very gratifying, and very much a year of re-inflating the balloon of reading for both “instruction and delight“ – one of the requirements of my nature that somehow got covered with dust, but that’s back off the shelf and open again.