People who want ideas about how men approach the reading of books could do much worse than to listen to Dotun Adebayos late night programme on Radio 5 on Sundays
He usually asks a simple question such as What is the most scary book you have ever read? People ring in
But the people who ring are not the usual suspects at all. Neither in the sense of being typical of the sort of people who too often dominate late night radio phone ins, nor the sort you usually hear discussing literature on the BBC
Such as men who are not part of the artistic or literary establishment. Many are quite elderly – no doubt listening to late night radio because of insomnia or other health problems. Some have been life-long readers & may mention a book, long out of print, of which neither Dotun nor his book-reviewer studio guest has ever heard
Others have touching stories to tell of how, perhaps quite late in life & certainly long after school, they have discovered the joys of reading.
Dotun is particularly good at giving his callers the encouragement & space to open up & genuinely respects their opinions
One story which sticks in my mind was of the man who had found that charity shops are a very good source of cheap books to buy – perhaps from the backlist of an author he had only recently discovered. So any day trip or visit to a new town or city now offered him & his wife the additional pleasure of a new shop to rummage in
Related post: Romantic books for boys
