During the pandemic, Queen Camilla (then the Duchess of Cornwall) started a book club where she encouraged adults to simply read more. In the past five years, that book club has morphed into “The Queen’s Reading Room,” a much wider effort to promote literacy across the board and encourage reading at all levels, for all ages. As I get older and I see the youths live their lives online and on social media, I do think literacy programs are more vital than ever. It would not surprise me at all if literacy rates have fallen off a cliff in North America and Europe in the past decade, and there’s data and anecdotal evidence to back that up. Keep in mind, Camilla’s literacy promotion can also be read as a slam on her stepson Prince William, who seems to be functionally illiterate and/or too lazy to read anything, even his briefing papers.

The Queen has described her charity’s mission to get people reading as “more urgent than ever”. She added that “books do make life better” as she marked the fifth anniversary of her Reading Room book club. Queen Camilla, who founded The Queen’s Reading Room in lockdown, said: “At a time when global reading rates are at their very lowest, my charity’s mission feels more urgent than ever. Books do make life better, and this is only the beginning.”

She said that with global reading rates at their “very lowest, my charity’s mission feels more urgent than ever”.

Currently, only one in two UK adults read a book in a year, and 46 per cent of people say they struggle to finish one due to distractions around them.

Her Majesty added: “Five years ago, I founded a book club in lockdown, in the hope that others might derive as much enjoyment from good literature as I do. Since those humble beginnings, that book club has grown into a global charity, supporting a community of book lovers, united by a shared belief in the power of reading. I am so proud of what my charity has achieved, reaching millions of people, staging remarkable events and partnering with incredible organisations to bring books to people who need them most. Its groundbreaking research has confirmed what many of us always felt: reading truly changes how we perceive, how we think and how we connect.”

The Queen’s Reading Room’s motto for its birthday this year is Make Room for Reading, with a drive to encourage people to find easy ways to fit in just five minutes of reading a day, just like 10,000 daily steps or five portions of fruit and vegetables. The charity will also focus on “lighting little fires” by inspiring others to make small positive changes.

Neuroscience research by the organisation showed that just five minutes of reading a work of fiction can immediately reduce stress by nearly 20 per cent, improve concentration and focus by as much as 11 per cent, and reduce feelings of loneliness. Globally, Unicef found an estimated 70 per cent of 10-year-olds in low and middle-income countries around the world were unable to read and understand a simple written story in 2022, up from around 57 per cent in the pre-pandemic period, when progress had already stalled.

[From The Telegraph]

Something interesting alongside of this is that, in America, bookstores are thriving again, and there’s a lot of data that readers actually want to buy real books that they can hold and bookmark and put in their bag. My guess is that while literacy rates are declining, readers are simply… reading more and more books. These book clubs really work for people who want to read. But I still think we need programs (across the board) to increase literacy for children and adults.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.