I have always been a prodigious reader.
I can’t remember a single moment from my childhood when I wasn’t reading any book I could get my hands from Dr. Seuss through to Tove Jannsson’s Moomins and Nils-Olof Franzén’s Agaton Sax series through to The Hardy Boys, the William series, Alfred Hitchock’s Three Investigators and the life-changing books of Gerald Durrell.
All these books and countless others formed the narrative of my childhood, educating me, entertaining me and helping me to escape into worlds far removed from the bullying-blighted reality I occupied, and my devotion to them is considerable.
However, my fondness and appreciation for them does not extend so far as to get the characters tattooed onto my body, as the good and brave people profiled in this Buzzfeed post by Alanna Okun did, largely because I am big, fat, afraid of needles coward.
There I said it.
But kudos to the people featured in the post who have gone to the time and effort, and pain, to have book characters they remember and love from their childhood inked onto their flesh.
It’s a brilliant idea, another way to take characters from our imagination and put them on display wherever we go for all to see.
You can see the full suite of examples at Buzzfeed.
