Q1

Text 1 — Nonfiction extract
Explain how Daniel Gray uses language to invite the reader to share his experiences.

Text 1 — Nonfiction extract
New books find their way to us via a number of routes. Most obvious is bricks-and-mortar store browsing. There we are, in a shop, reading the back cover, brushing fingers over embossed titles, handling and patting, appreciating the book as an object. We can tickle spines and open up to brush pages, and – if no one’s looking – devour their smell. If everything chimes then the book is placed in a wrestler’s headlock, claimed as a joey kangaroo in its mother’s pouch. Chances are that it will soon have siblings – our eyes are bigger than our bedside tables. Or perhaps a new book may be fostered from a library or foisted* upon you by a friend who insists you will appreciate it. On the way home, blurbs are again consumed, and other furnishings idly absorbed – the review quote and the About the Author, the writer dedication and the font declaration. Then there is that saintly thud of an online order plummeting from the letterbox, or the luscious scrape of cardboard on floor as, on returning home, you push the front door against the package. To buy online leaves you blind in comparison with bookshop scrutiny, but the gamble is surely worth the prize of feverishly setting about unwrapping the parcel. We are Charlie Bucket unwrapping a Wonka Bar, and there is a golden-ticket feeling every time. By whichever route a book finds us, in our hands we now hold, we hope, a future escape. DANIEL GRAY Extract from Scribbles in the Margins * foiste imposed © Daniel Gray, 2017, Scribbles in the Margins: 50 Eternal Delights of Books, Bloomsbury Publishing Plc