By the time my daughter was 10, she couldn’t read a damn. I was horrified. Three generations of Schlesingers never went anywhere without a book in their bags. By her age, I waa reading 2 books each day after school and another 2 in the morning during vacation time.

So one day, quite desperate, I told her I would read her a story. I grabbed one of my Famous Five books from childhood, and read her the first chapter. The next night I read the second chapter. The third night the third chapter. The fourth night, I was too busy to read and asked her to read to me. She said she couldn’t and was quite upset.

Ten minutes later I went to her bedroom, and there she was lying on her bed — reading the book.

By the time she was 13, she was doing some pretty serious reading. From being barely literate at that time (South Africa), her teacher (A levels, London) told me she was an excellent writer. I waa pretty impressed myself. A few years later, when she attended college in San Diego ( California), her professor came to tell me she was a very talented writee.

She later told me she hadn’t been interested in reading because they read such boring books at school.

For myself, on the first day of my second year of school, our teacher told us about comics and told us we could take them home — provided we returned them. She also told us about libraries. I asked my mum to sign me up. Fortunately, there was one two blocks away, and from that day to this, I have never stopped reading a book a day. I turn 70 in 4 months.

I failed English in my final high school exam. That’s probably because I found the insistence by teachers to find meaning in literary books boring and just switched off. By the same token, I was already writing (and published) by the time I was 10 years old. At the age of 18, I won a national writing competition, the judge telling me it was the finest piece of writing he had seen in twenty years.

I loathe literary books. I think the writers of literary fiction are pretentious dumbfucks, and I have no doubt that the insistence that these authors be read by the literati at schools and colleges is why so many people never become addicted to reading.