‘O tell me the truth about love…’: A Little, Aloud with Love hits the shelves

Good news for lovers everywhere - the latest addition to our A Little, Aloud series is published today, with a distinctly romantic flavour just ahead of Valentine's Day...

A Little Aloud with Love brings together some of the most popular works in the English language, celebrating love in all its forms: that heady first flush, the agony of heartbreak, joyful reunions, the love of a parent for a child... and what better way to share these beautiful pieces than to read them aloud, to that special someone? The anthology features both classic and contemporary selections to warm the heart, from Robert Browning to the Brontes, Shelley to Shakespeare, W.B. Yeats to W.H. Auden, bringing us right up to date with modern takes on love from authors such as Haruki Murakami, Margaret Atwood and David Constantine.

Delving into the passionately pink cover, you'll find that the collection is divided up into sections so that there's a poem or story to suit any occasion and reading partner. Read:

• ‘Our places by the fire place’ to a parent
• ‘My love is come to me’ to a partner
• ‘Most near, most dear’ to a child
• ‘A need to reach out sometimes’ to a friend.

What's more, each section is paired with observations, questions and connections made by our Shared Reading group members from across the country, allowing readers to become part of a bigger discussion. Sometimes the insights are humorous, others speak of deeper emotions. All are entirely personal responses to reading literature about love, prompted only by the poems and stories themselves:

'Her name was Ruth and I was mad about her for two years and never plucked up the courage to even speak to her,’ said a man in a nursing-home reading group. 

Someone else wondered if the poet would still be passionate after twenty years of marriage. ‘Never mind the poems, she’ll be lucky then if she gets a bunch of garage flowers on their anniversary.’

Research has shown that being read to can help to make us healthier and happier, enriching our hearts as well as our minds, and A Little, Aloud with Love is bursting with literature to lift the spirits. Even better is the news that the publisher Chatto & Windus is donating all royalties from A Little, Aloud with Love to The Reader, so by buying a copy you’ll be supporting our work running Shared Reading groups across the UK – enough to give anyone a warm fuzzy feeling inside.