I am reading now.

It’s official! I have now quit my day job. So now instead of being a writer with a day job I’m an unemployed writer. The difference is minimal and I get to spend way more time without socks on. Being an unemployed writer also gives me more time to do one of my favourite things: read. I love to read. Reading is important. When I was a kid I was one of those kids who always needed something to read while he ate his cereal. It was usually the back of the cereal box or sometimes I would read the Comics section of the newspaper. Nowadays I do the same thing except, while trying unsuccessfully to keep milk and Cheerio crumbs out of my beard, I usually browse the Huffington Post on my iPad and read about the “Top 10 nip-slips in Emmy’s History” and the “8 NSFW sites that will probably get you fired today”. The times are different but the idea is the same and that idea is that reading is important and valid. This is of course unless you are reading 50 Shades of Grey. In this case you are not reading, you are doing something much much worse.

What a coincidence that I now have more time to read and next week is Read-In Week in my part of the world. For those of you who don’t know what Read-In Week is- it’s a week that celebrates and encourages reading. If you are a local celebrity then you will find yourself in a room full of children, reading to them a story book that their teacher handed you just seconds before. If you’re like me, an unemployed writer with time on his hands, then you call up some random schools and ask them if you can read to their children. Sometimes they will say yes. So next week I will be like the guy in the picture above and I will be reading to young children. I will do crazy voices. It will be hilarious! If you have suggestions for books that children like then please email or tweet me the titles and I will try to find them at the local bookstore or library.

If you are a local celebrity or just a private citizen of this or any country I suggest that you volunteer to read to some kids next week or just make a point of reading to your kids and then maybe have the kids read to you and then critique all their pronounciations. Stuff like that. Fun family stuff. Have fun with it.

Good luck!

 

JLN