This report by Stevie Godson appeared in today’s Daily Dispatch:

DO YOU read? Well, of course you do – you’re reading this, aren’t you?

But apart from newspapers and magazines, do you read books?

In our house the bookshelves are practically buckling – I don’t just read them, I can’t bear to part with them, that’s the problem. But you’d be surprised how many people don’t pick up a book – ever.

I was shocked to learn that a group of young people taking an English writing course at a tertiary institution in SA confessed to their lecturer that they didn’t read! Why on earth were they there in the first place?

The lecturer was author Zukiswa Wanner, who has a couple of successful novels under her belt – The Madams and Behind Every Successful Man – and a new book, Men of the South, due out in the middle of next year.

She was so horrified that it set her off on a mission.

“My first exercise with my students,” she explains, “was for them to write that oh-so- loved essay by Grade 3 teachers entitled ‘Myself’ … I did this so that I could assess the quality of my students’ writing.

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