For as long as I can remember, my reading material has formed a kind of orbit around me. Every time I read a new sentence, particularly when the book is good, and it’s good surprisingly often, it feels like a re-negotiation of the world. My reading matter tends to be multi-genred and multi-modal. I like to surround myself with different types of texts, so it would be normally an audiobook on the way to work, some poetry on the bedside table, and a novel or two by the sofa. I will immerse myself in both poetry and fiction most evenings or over the course of a very relaxing weekend if I’m lucky. Reading is so pleasurable for me that I will often sneak read, that is, slip into another room and steal a few moments into a story that is playing on my mind, or read while waiting for a family member to get ready to go out, while onions are frying, or in the gap between appointments. Different books read together or consecutively seem to inform one another, the characters connecting dots in my brain. It may be that my choices are related to the issues that concern me at the moment or it may be that the work itself focuses my attention in a way that causes me to see the world in different ways.

Re-reading is a particular pleasure, not least because it’s usually stimulated by encouragement, which means there’s a bonus opportunity to share the joy through post-reading discussion. I’ve just finished re-reading the whole of Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis trilogy (aka Lilith’s Brood) after my son convinced me one reading wasn’t enough. He was right. NASA just named the Martian landing site of the Perseverance rover ‘Octavia E. Butler Landing’, a well-deserved honour for this prescient, multi–award winning writer whose themes of global warming; human hierarchies and aggression; prejudice; and the healing, regenerative nature of connection between humans and the natural world remain increasingly relevant to a modern reader. They’re also engaging stories, with a fully realised universe and fascinating aliens that do not rely on tropes or physical attributes to draw the reader in. Butler’s alternative future is both appealing and repulsive in equal measures, and the prose is rich and sensuous, equating human and alien beauty in a way that remains compelling throughout the series: