Ross and I were sitting having a lovely coffee and chat this morning about all sorts of different things. The conversation came round to the subject of Dreamcatcher’s blog which Ross has been contributing to recently with some lovely posts. He has had a lot of engagement with people and many emails to say how much people are enjoying his writing.

“I’m surprised I have not had any book suggestions from my post yesterday about my “lockdown” books. I was looking forward to hearing about what other people are reading. In fact, I have not had any engagement at all on it really”.

I looked over to see if he was about to burst out laughing (I could hardly contain mine). There was a look of genuine puzzlement on his face!

I could hold it in no longer and I exploded into a burst of totally uncontrollable laughter. David came bounding out of the house always eager not to miss out on any laughs that were going around, followed quickly by Jamie out of the office.

“Well” I floundered, looking for words that would not hurt too much and I could actually say while trying to control the laughter a little. “Do you think that your book choices are maybe just a little bit heavy for most people looking for lockdown reading?”

A look of genuine bewilderment passed across his face as I reflected on the last 5 books I had read:

The Mum who got her Life Back – Fiona Gibson

The Rumour – Lesley Kara

Nothing Ventured – Jeffrey Archer

Eleanor Oliphant is completely Fine – Gail Honeyman

Never Go Back – Lee Child

“Really?” he said.

“Come on mate” David chimed in. “A hostage negotiator dealing with terrorists, a book set in Columbia, originally in Spanish about struggle and strife, and the others about how the greatest minds structure their lives – it’s not exactly what the rest of us are reading”.

The light began to dawn and we were soon all in uncontrollable fits of laughter.

“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” – Dr. Seuss.

Agreed. However, just sometimes (nearly always), a book for me is a place to escape to and think of nothing else apart from the story unfolding in front of my very nose. I suspect for most of you this may be the case too.