The joys of reading – you never know what the pages hold

I refer to the correspondence on getting back your reading groove (Letters, 28 April). I started my working life at 16 as an apprentice in the building industry, soon to progress to a chartered surveyor on day release and night school.

I am a practical person and very involved in local communities, including a Scout leader most of my life. Reading has never been easy for me, and with some regret have only read two books, when required to at college, but I read the Guardian daily. I must admit that I find reading factual or fiction books rather boring after the first half a dozen pages when I can be active in our garden or community. We have two sons: one reads a lot, the other a practical lad like me. He is filling his time with building jobs at home, Scouting and gardening.
Phil Barlow
Nottingham

• I can endorse John Dallimore’s recommendation of the white-on-blue Fitzcarraldo Editions of fiction works. My latest is Joshua Cohen’s Pulitzer-winning The Netanyahus (2021). Relatively short and hilarious!
Peter Bunyan
Billericay, Essex

• I always cherish the moment I picked from the bookshop shelf the thrillingly titled Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather (Virago edition), and the absolute delight when this non-crime novel turned into a 19th-century peregrination by Catholic priests on mules across New Mexico. It came to be my favourite ever book (so far). One never knows what the pages hold.
Ron Rooney
Peterlee, County Durham

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