For me, there is no reading more enjoyable than reading done secretly at work. I find the secrecy and risk of being caught, plus the jarring nature of the place you find yourself in, somehow makes your imagination keener, and makes you more sensitive to what you’re reading. 

I read, for example, 1984 while working in a grain store in the East Midlands, where I grew up and still live.  I had to help lorries back up to the grain pit, sweep out the lorries if need be and, while I was waiting for loads to arrive, I was supposed to sweep up. Of course no one checked, and anyway as soon as a lorry had tipped up, it was as dusty as ever. I found a corner where I could see the pit area but no one noticed me, and spent at least half my time with Winston and Julia, having outsmarted my own Big Brother with ease. Since then I’ve read in warehouses (James Ellroy), on farms (Murakami) and while waiting as a driver, although that’s quite acceptable. 

I know I’m not alone in this pleasure, because I’ve read that the young Sue Townsend was sacked from a clothes shop for reading Oscar Wilde in the changing rooms, and Mark Hodkinson writes about getting away with it in No One Round Here Reads Tolstoy.


Sadly, in my current job (on an arable farm) I spend quite a lot of time filling in forms in an office now, so it’s more difficult as there are fewer situations where you get left to wait on your own. However, others do manage it – if you look at the Reading At Work thread on Reddit’s r/books, you’ll find lots of stories of people managing to read novels on screen while pretending to work. Fair play to the bloke who’s read Brothers K, The Three Musketeers, Frankenstein, Meditations and Dracula by pasting Project Gutenberg files into Word docs. 

I know some would say this is time-theft, but I get my work done, and as I don’t smoke I don’t have fag breaks. And in any case, it makes me a more intelligent person, which I’m sure my employer appreciates.

Secret Reader

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