LETTERS ON THE November ISSUE We pay £30 for every published letter
Nine Years Old Again
I have not picked up a Reader’s Digest for many years now but your cover story on Natalie Portman caught my eye.
As I thumbed through the pages, I found myself slowing down, consuming each page instead of looking immediately for the article on Portman as I normally would. In fact, I had not only read each line of the Contents page, I had also looked through the publisher’s details, the advertisements, the Editor’s Letter, the letters from readers and even the Poetry Corner. I was reading as I had as a child, every word on the page.
Soon—actually, a few hours later—I had read the Reader’s Digest cover to cover, having smirked at some jokes, learned some new developments in the medical and art world, solved some puzzles and wondered about where I could travel next, sustainably.
I suppose that sounds rather ordinary, but in this world inundated with content meant to distract us at every turn, I found myself amazed at how wonderfully captivating Reader’s Digest continues to be. May the publication be like Arthur Devis’s Portrait of a Man, forever in search of its lost other half and always in conversation with us.
KATHLEEN YAO, Singapore
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Page Versus Screen
I was so excited to read the article by Richard Glover in November's issue titled “The Triumph Of The Book”. Up until now I had thought myself a lone voice in the wilderness whenever I expressed my preference of the book over digital.
An enthusiastic reader over the last 50 or more years, my bookshelves, like those of Mr Glover's, map my life's journey. Like him, I find it quicker and easier to turn to a page in a book to find something, and to use an "actual bookmark" as opposed to just bookmarking a digital page.
When I look at my groaning bookshelves, I recall happy times of this bookshop in Norfolk on my way to meet my sister or that bookshop in Rochester when I was spending a few days there. Or my books handed down to me from my mother and grandmother (I come from a long line of avid readers, and it continues with my own children and grandchildren).
I totally agree with Richard Glover about the smell and feel of books and the excitement of seeing notes pencilled in the margin. Having said all that, I have one point to
