By: Nomi Kaltmann as seen in the Herald Sun

24 August 2025

“This is my ode to reading.

I know, the writer who loves reading is a little bit cliche. But in my life there are very few things have given me as much pleasure and calm as reading. Growing up, I didn’t always love reading. In prep, when I was five, I struggled with words. I remember telling one of my babysitters that I hated reading.

I didn’t fall in love with reading until grade four. My teacher, Mrs Hyman, was a bookworm who lived and breathed stories. When our class was noisy, she would invoke DEAR-Drop Everything and Read. One of my clearest childhood memories is when Mrs Hyman took us on excursions to St Kilda library, twenty-five girls piling novels onto the tram. Thanks to Mrs Hyman, reading stopped being hard work and started feeling like magic.

These days, most of my reading happens on Saturdays when it is the Jewish Shabbat and I can’t use my phone or computer. Depending on how much quiet I get, I’ll finish one book, sometimes two. I read widely: an Emily Henry romance one week, a serious book on mental health the next. Over the past year I’ve especially loved new Australian fiction, Green Dot by Madeleine Gray, Love and Virtue by Diana Reid and Rytual by Chloe Elisabeth Wilson.

With books, I can live a thousand lives. I can explore cultures I know little about or occupy the thoughts of someone much older or younger than me. I love translated works that place me in the mind of a young French person or a writer in Japan. Reading has become a respite from the chaos of the world.

I’m trying to pass that love on to my children. My seven-year-old is slowly becoming a bookworm, making his way through Harry Potter as my husband and I read it aloud to him, rediscovering the surprises that once shaped me. This week he celebrated book week, and we spent a long time deciding which was his favourite book and which costume he should wear to his school book week parade. In the end, Harry Potter won out, and he went as a Hogwarts student, once again proving that the magic of books is transferable from generation to generation.

For me, reading is immersion and surrender. I get into flow and I lose myself in the pages. When I read, I always come out changed, carrying a piece of someone else’s world with me. Books remind me that no matter how heavy life feels, there are countless ways of seeing. Books remind me that perspective is elastic, that even in the hardest seasons, there is still joy to be found in words on a page…”