Having a new table for my reading lamp (one of the little Serious Readers we brought from the UK), I can now see well enough to read a book.
I’m really enjoying the experience.
I have a Folio edition of the Philip Marlowe books (which are from a very different era). The first is, of course, The Big Sleep.
I love Chandler 
Most of my son’s pupils have never read a proper book let alone own one/any. He told them they were missing out big time and no amount of AI/Tiktok can replace the printed word. The way things are going in schools here there won’t be any need for teachers soon or even going to school.
Where do you stand on Wodehouse?
I love him too, the little I’ve read. I’m a particular fan of the Empress of Blandings obv. Do you like Saki? My favourite. So awful Jane Gardam has died she is fab.
My children are all voracious readers like me and most of my specialists doing LLCER for the Bac either already were or became readers, even in English, with encouragement and the loan of things I thought would hook them. Obv I lent them books in French or Spanish too, nobody took me up on German. My compulsory-English-for-the-Bac cohort varied a lot.
Very much, but there’s so little of him.
Never heard of Jane Gardam. So far.
Except I had 
— at least I knew the acronym.
They used 1984 as template for the last decade and are using Idiotcracy for the next.
Have enjoyed reading the authors mentioned above, but in truth have read very little fiction in the past thirty years. However the title of the thread made me think that there are at least two very different aspects to the joy of reading. The first is the obvious one, but the second can perhaps be equally pleasurable, the increasingly rare satisfaction of reading from a well-bound book.
Most of my purchases are second-hand hardback books published by US university presses who maintain the sort of quality that is seldom found elsewhere these days (except in the Folio Society’s beautiful publications). So for me there are at least three conceptual dimensions to a book, what has been written, what it evokes, and the pleasure of handling the physical object - the quality of the binding, elegant, but unobtrusive type setting, the generous width of the gutter and the tension of the binding - I don’t want to break a book in order to read it, but neither do I want it to open sloppily.
So for me, in comparison, Kindle reading is a somewhat soulless experience…
I, too, much prefer the feel of a real book, but Kindle does have advantages. I don’t much like reading in bed but I do like to read a few pages before going to sleep. A 600 page volume is a bit heavy. Kindle is very practical but there’s nothing quite like the feel of a proper book.
Totally agree with you, Plod. There’s nothing to replace the feel of a book in your hands.
Don’t have a favourite author as such. Depends on mood and what is to hand. We are fortunate to have a library opposite our house in the UK. It’s so important to keep libraries open in the UK. Other countries too, of course. It was threatened with closure at one time but we all got together to make sure that wouldn’t happen. We had a paid librarian until recently and now it’s run on a voluntary basis, as are most things in our village. Fortunate to have it still, with the bonus that books taken out from other libraries within the county can be returned to our local library to be returned to the library from which they came.
So useful to pop in my handbag when heading for doctor/vet/hospital and I know I’m going to be stuck in a waiting room somewhere.
I have “Puck of Pook’s Hill” bound in a fine, burgundy soft leather, with the thinnest of paper pages and black and white illustrations. It is a joy to look at and handle.
I think that is a big part (although not all) of whether young people read actual books- beyond compulsory school materials.
My wife and I carried books everywhere on our ‘courtship adventures’ all over. And we discussed regularly how to intentionally build a family culture of reading, without harassment or guilting (‘you don’t know what you’re missing’ is annoying in any context).
Now our kids are 9 and 12 and they read constantly, in English, French and Dutch.
Every second year we go to Canada and much of our return luggage is books in English. Our biggest problem is running out of space for the books we want to keep. Our son changed bedrooms recently to a smaller room but with more bookshelf space!
My girlfriend is an avid reader, often with two books on the go at the same time. She will not go away for a weekend break without a book and will always find ten minutes to read.
Though, despite being a two time French national dressage champion, she will not read a book with horses as the subject 