Tom Haig
“I made a decision to keep a record of the books I’d read for the year…
I’d just finished Victory Park by Rachel Kerr, so I took a picture, wrote a few lines and posted it to Instagram. I did it because I liked the idea of being more deliberate about what I read – I also liked the idea of having a social media experience that was less combative than Twitter.
I’ve always been a keen reader. As a kid and teenager I was very into fantasy – Tolkien was at the top of my book pile. I’ve branched out since then, and these days read pretty eclectically. Almost half of the books I’ve read recently have been non-fiction, so I guess I’m starting to engage with the real world a bit more than I used to!
Sometimes a good book is an escape, sometimes I find out fascinating stuff, sometimes I feel like I’m participating in a discussion with writers from different times and places about their world and ideas. The two New Zealand books I’ve thought and talked about the most this year are Patricia Grace’s autobiography, From the Centre, and the biography of Ralph Hotere by Vincent O’Sullivan, The Dark is Light Enough. Reading each, I found myself pausing frequently to tell my partner Melissa what was happening. I work in education – I used to be a teacher – and I hadn’t known that both Grace and Hotere trained as teachers and worked in schools for years. New Zealand is very lucky to have had these two brilliant minds teaching both young people and other teachers, and I hope we have their contemporary equivalents working in schools still.
I’m aware that I’m a privileged reader, both in that the technical part of reading came easily to me but probably more importantly, in that many of the books that I’ve read have had characters that I could relate to easily. Reading stories by CS Lewis or Arthur Ransome as a kid, the characters’ lives weren’t so remote from mine. While part of the beauty and joy of reading is seeing the world from different perspectives, I also think if you aren’t able to see yourself and don’t feel as if your world exists in literature, that must put up a big barrier to wanting to read. That’s one reason having local, real experiences shown in books is so valuable. The other, is that literature helps construct our view of ourselves as a nation. I’m a fan of Benedict Anderson’s concept of imagined communities, and literature is our shared imagination.
It’s been an interesting year keeping my reading record. Along the way, I’ve discovered that bookstagrammers often take very artful, well-composed photos, which mine are definitely not; if I keep going next year I’m going to have to work on my flat lays. I’ve had some good conversations though – one cool connection I made, after posting about Bishops: My Turbulent Colonial Youth, was that a friend of mine has known the author Mona Williams for years. I’m hoping for an introduction because after reading her work, I’m a massive fan.”
Tom Haig is a reader, educator and is recording his reading via @tom.haig5 on Instagram