This year's READ! theme - Home And Away - seeks to widen the field even further. At the same time, it allows for sentimental and psychic interplay between being Singaporean and the globalised experience and existence that come with travel and residence abroad (or, indeed, with just living in the globalised and cosmopolitan environment at home). It is, in short, an attempt through the monochrome typography of books to explore the colourful emotional topography within and beyond the boundaries of mere physical geography. Admittedly, it is a challenging exercise in abstraction. So it is just as well that the campaign leader, the National Library Board, is pushing to partner pragmatically with the hotel, food and beverage and airline industries to target service staff. Reading and book discussions would surely help these workers expand their horizons. But let's hope the aim is not primarily to train them to serve customers better, for that would merely mean re-trudging old utilitarian terrain.

Instead, they should come to love books as an end in itself - for the non-materialistic pleasures they offer. If reading has benefits beyond the individual, these again are infinitely more valuable as part of a free, open-ended, and edifying conversation a community ought to have with itself than as a contribution merely to economic advantage. Books can become 'meccas of the mind to wandering souls', as one writer put it. The more people read, the stronger the community bond and the richer the national fabric.