Newcastle University

What do you think discussing books with others adds to your own experience of reading?

Quite a lot, really, because people see different points of view that you hadn’t thought of, or pick up on points that you hadn’t noticed. And then, you know, actually discussing a point causes people to delve a bit deeper and look at things from different points of view in itself, so it deepens the discussion, I think, as opposed to just reflecting on it on your own. And I’ve quite often found, books that I haven’t really liked on reading, when we’ve actually ended up discussing them, you can actually see some benefits and merits to them because other people have spotted things that you missed, or you sort of dismissed because you didn’t like it very much in the first place. So I think it’s ... I enjoy those discussions because I think it does kind of, as I say, deepen your understanding and your thinking, and you explore things in much more depth than you can do just thinking about and reflecting on it yourself.