There are few things that give us greater pleasure than reading. A moment of escapism. Time expands as you connect with secret parts of yourself and distractions fall away, followed by the long ache that comes with the last page. Literature is at the heart of JOUISSANCE, it is our first love. Of course, the act of reading itself, how one engages with other people’s stories, is an entirely personal endeavour.

To celebrate World Book Day, this month’s Diary is dedicated to the intimacy of reading rituals, returning to cherished practices or nurturing new ones. Drawing inspiration from those cultivated over the years by the likes of Marguerite Duras to Susan Sontag, literary icons who found everyday wonderment in words.

Timing is everything. Or rather, carving out the perfect time to fully immerse yourself in a book. When time is simply yours to play with. In the early hours before a child, lover, or roommate rises, say; over a lunch break; in the later evening when all work responsibilities can wait until dawn.

There’s power, too, in a fitting bedtime reading uniform. We’re of the Jane Birkin school of thought here. When you’ve got nothing left, all you can do is get into silk underwear and start reading Proust.

What’s your dream reading spot? It’s a question we posed to writers commissioned for JOUISSANCE’s short story series, The Collector (Natasha Stagg, Julia Armfield, Susanna Davies-Crook and Emily Wells). Each offered up differing responses: the sun-dappled haze of European squares, a nook discovered in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery surrounded by swans, post-river swim, or in bed with their favourite snacks.

I read all the time, anywhere — on my stoop, in a noisy cafe, at night in my tour bus bunk. The external circumstance is not the key, it’s the book itself. I’m like Gumby; I enter the world of a book and temporarily live there, shutting all else out. Unless I’m researching, I only finish books I love. I don’t date. I can pretty much tell right away if I’m going to commit. There are also books I know I will love someday.

For French memoirist and Simple Passion author Annie Ernaux, the when and where are inconsequential. And yet, there are still certain conditions that are required for her. Firstly, silence. Alongside being seated comfortably with the book rested on her knees, a pencil to underline passages and, crucially, there being no strict time limit.

Sometimes I think heaven must be one continuous unexhausted reading.

I read all the time. I probably spend more time reading than any other thing I’ve done in my life, including sleeping. I’ve spent many, many days of my life reading eight and ten hours a day, and there’s no day that I don’t read for hours, and don’t ask me how I can do all the other things — I don’t know. The day has pockets — you can always find time to read.

— Susan Sontag, 1992 Lecture on The Project of Literature

The ‘one read at a time’ rule need not apply. Like a friend or lover, sometimes we can fall in and out of intimacy with books, and need space before coming back to them. Sex and Rage author Eve Babitz usually had two books going at any one time. Writer Kiley Reid shares that she enjoys making her books “compete against one another”, akin to a heated ménage à trois. This way, Reid explains, her feelings for them become clear very quickly.

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world,” as James Baldwin once said, “but then you read.”