Relearning to Read
Adventures in Not-Knowing
Published on 1. October 2025
Book
Paperback/Softback
224 pages
978-1-80447-132-6 (ISBN)
Description
Relearning to Read: Adventures in Not-Knowing invites you to turn the way you read upside down and see what falls out. Drawing on an approach to reading developed over more than a decade of interactions with stories and book-lovers around the world through the author's hit blog ayearofreadingtheworld.com, the book puts not-knowing centre stage and plays with what examining the gaps in our understanding and the assumptions we use to plug them can teach us about ourselves and our world.
Many books about books celebrate the cosiness and consolation of reading; Relearning to Read does the opposite. Built on the realisation that to read widely we must make friends with incomprehension - because no one can be an expert in all the world's literatures - it explores how getting comfortable with discomfort and owning our limitations can take us further and deepen our appreciation of the world's complexity and richness.
Many books about books celebrate the cosiness and consolation of reading; Relearning to Read does the opposite. Built on the realisation that to read widely we must make friends with incomprehension - because no one can be an expert in all the world's literatures - it explores how getting comfortable with discomfort and owning our limitations can take us further and deepen our appreciation of the world's complexity and richness.
Reviews / Votes
'Provocative, vigorous, elegant and compelling - this beautiful book dares us to stop making our minds up, and start to open them instead. It will stimulate so much curiosity, compassion and ambition in its readers. It needs to be read as widely as possible.' -- Daisy Buchanan, author of Read Yourself Happy 'Relearning to Read is a wonderfully enlightening look at how and why we read. Expansive and open-hearted, it is a genuinely original and transformative book.' -- Doug Johnstone, author of The Jump 'Ann Morgan is a reader's reader, and in Relearning to Read she uses her erudition and powers of insight to hone a lively discussion on how to read books from around our increasingly fractured world - and how to live within the chaos.' -- Anton Hur, author of Toward Eternity 'Ann Morgan's quietly profound book shows us how, paradoxically, by acknowledging what we don't know, we can engage with what we read more deeply. Relearning to Read is a guidebook to a brave new world of literary pleasures'. -- Keith Kahn-Harris, author of The Babel Message: A Love Letter to LanguageMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
United Kingdom
Product notice
Paperback (UK-B)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Card cover
Dimensions
Height: 194 mm
Width: 127 mm
Thickness: 17 mm
Weight
218 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-80447-132-6 (9781804471326)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
10/2025
Renard Press
€9.99
Available for download
Persons
Ann Morgan is an author, speaker and editor based in Folkestone. Ann's writing has been published widely, including in the Guardian, Independent and Financial Times, and by the BBC. In 2012, she set herself the challenge of reading a book from every country in a year - a project that led to a TED talk and to the non-fiction book Reading the World: How I Read a Book from Every Country. Her debut novel, Beside Myself, has been translated into eight languages. Crossing Over, her latest novel, draws on her experience living just a few minutes from where many of the small boats crossing the Channel land. She is Literary Explorer in Residence of the Cheltenham Literature Festival for 2022 and 2023.