I was sitting in my hotel room in Tasmania when news came through last week that Australians, but especially men, are reading less than ever before.

According to the new data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the most common group of regular readers are now older women (48 per cent), compared with just 10.1 per cent of males aged 15 to 24. Given I’d just been at a book event where the crowd was predominantly female, and older too, this seemed to track.

Brandon Jack played 28 AFL games over five seasons for the Sydney Swans and has just published his second book.Credit: Tim Bauer

Despite now being a full-time writer, I was not the bookish type growing up. It wasn’t until I came across Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting in my mid-20s that the reading flame was ignited. From Welsh, I bounced to Raymond Carver, Chuck Palahniuk, George Saunders and Charles Bukowski. My horizons have broadened since then, but they were the first literary loves that I held.

Reading is sometimes a chore, sometimes an experience that distracts me from........

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