Today a Reader Tomorrow a…

I miss Yann Martel’s fantastic What is Stephen Harper Reading project. His battle to encourage reading in our leaders, or to start young people as readers in order to make them great leaders, is inspiring and, I think, one of his greatest contributions to literature. Even though I don’t care much for his writing, I have tremendous respect for Martel as a thinker and appreciate his efforts to promote literacy.

I can not see how you can be a thinking person who is head of a government without having accessed what fiction can give you. It makes you be someone else, somewhere else, during the duration of the book. And that’s very very useful. It helps you get beyond the confines of your narrow life. Overall, the cumulative effect over time tends to bring down blinkers,  tends to increase tolerance.