Sarah Gallagher
The book about mindfulness, newly purchased through Book Depository for dealing with anxiety and PTSD was recommended by my therapist. I visualised myself studiously poring over it and completing the various sections of the workbook, each of the completed sections a stepping-stone to wellness, wholeness and peace. However, opening the cover and seeing the word ‘anxiety’ in the title struck me down. I cried so much I couldn’t get past the first page. I never read the book.





Save the world? Let’s all start reading again, that’s what I say. Reading a book is an intensely personal activity. It’s just you and the words, make of them what you will. People can tell you what a book means to them, but no one can tell you what it means to you. That’s between you and the book. To find out, you need to come to know the book and your own mind. Those discoveries are generated in the private act of exploration we call reading. To be immersed in a book is to inhabit a creative and enchanted space, which is no bad thing to practice doing in a world that has come to feel distressingly devoid of magic. Because what is magic, if not another word for hope?