It was disconcerting for the novel to seem so different when I re-read it. Of course we are a different person each time we open a book to read it again; we can never really experience it in the same way, just as we can never step into the same stream twice.

We read to find out what the world is like, to experience lots of lives, not just the one we live. If it is true that our lives are chaotic and we crave a shape, stories are the shapes that we put on experience, containing all the wisdom in the world. We can even choose what kind of wisdom suits us.

That's what is so precious in reading this way - you can plumb the depths of another's experience while sitting still with a book in your hands.

I learned that books could be collected, that they were important enough to keep and that a story that seemed to be over could be part of a bigger one.

I realised that reading was the key that opened the door to secret lands, strange places and the worlds behind other people's eyes.

Books that recount ordeals are precious because an ordeal is what we most fear, and the stories that tell us how to survive them reassure us about what a human being is capable of, as we survive our own lives every day, our own mysterious journeys.

Can we really be friends with those who don't love the books that we do? Of course we can, but can we really be friends with those who don't love any books? I'm not so sure of that.