The reading-for-pleasure strategy for adults

One page to send in an email · the sentences are mine, from posts and letters 2023–2026 · the fact box is apparatus with a source

What the strategy asks about

What reading ambition adds

People talk a lot about reading for pleasure, and that's important. To get started you have to read a ton, and whether it's Donald Duck or the Bobbsey Twins or Detektivbyrå nr 2 doesn't matter. But you can't stop there.

It's about daring to try slightly harder texts, slightly older texts, texts about unfamiliar things, texts with more literary language. And that doesn't just go for kids.

It's also totally fine to think "I'm not ready to get anything out of this text right now, but how can I get there — I want to be one of those people who appreciate this text". That's what I call reading ambition.

Some kids get it from home, and some don't. It's not enough that some teachers are heroic.

Cricket in Australia · 13 November 2025

The fact is that we have a lot of adults — most of them — who didn't grow up with, and who don't feel at home at, grown-up theater, a classical music concert, the opera, with reading older or more literary books, etc. And I've gotten very interested in how we can both motivate and help people to take that step well into adulthood.

And encourage grown-ups who weren't "raised on" high culture, that it's fine to start when you're 40! It's not too late!

The one thing that helps of course is having more content about literature that people run into. But it might have been interesting to do something concrete with "adult beginners" — could you find a bunch of people who started reading serious literature well into adulthood, and show them off, hear about how they started, what inspired them, what was hard at first, what really hit home...

The questions for the institutions

Where is the knowledge strategy for adults? As an adult I've decided that I want to learn more about classical music, about theater, about literature. I want to read Wergeland and understand him... Where do I go? Where are the universities with exciting lecture series that they stream? Where are the NRK programs with poetry readings? Where is Fjernsynsteateret? Arts school for adults?

Why don't we have a series at Hamar Teater where you get to see film classics with a short talk first, over half a year — buy a punch card ticket, it doesn't happen unless at least 30 people buy one? Why doesn't Teater Innlandet have a little lecture series on theater history, with a bit of insight into how things have changed from Ibsen to Jon Fosse? Why doesn't the arts school have a few evenings where you get insight into music from the baroque to romanticism, with musicians playing excerpts and adults practicing listening? (Why doesn't NRK????)

Where is the knowledge strategy for adults? · 13 November 2025

By the way I also took a bit of a look at the front pages of the big universities — they might have some podcast or some video recordings hidden away somewhere, but none of them had any clear call to action for people who aren't students and want to learn...

No call to action for people who aren't students · 29 December 2023

But after Fjernsynsteateret shut down, we have nothing at all in Norway — neither public nor private. The only thing we have is Applaus Scene, which is only available to schools. It's great that schools have something, but what about the rest of us?

Bring back Fjernsynsteateret · 1 March 2025

Proposals I've written down

Word for word, with dates · most of them go beyond reading, to radio, the stage and arts school

1. A hundred programs on a hundred works. "I would have loved to hear much more — had 100 episodes about the 100 most important works in world history, and followed how they influence each other, get adapted etc... And I could also very happily have taken a 3-hour episode on each of the works in the original series." To a literary critic at NRK · 9 February 2025
2. Radio that teaches its listeners. "What about a series of programs that introduces Norwegian folk music through the ages? Systematically? Or Grieg — I'd love to hear four hour-long programs about him. Romanticism abroad and how it influenced Norway... Now that a lot of people listen by podcast and there's a hunger for longer and deeper programs I think something like that could be popular." Comment at Ballade · 12 September 2025
3. The recordings that have already been made. "I'm all for artists and technicians getting paid, but absolutely nobody is making any money from us not getting to see this, are they?" And: "Imagine if for the Ibsen year 2028 we could present all the Ibsen plays in Fjernsynsteateret with English subtitles?!" "Peer, du lyver!" · 1 March 2025 · message, 22 August 2026
4. An outdoors book for culture. "I've often thought we need a similar book, for culture... ‘We decided to go to a play every week for a year’... ‘I didn't know much about classical music, but I wanted to explore it together with our kids’... ‘How we started having candlelit reading evenings once a week’... ‘I decided to try something new culturally every month. One month we went to the opera, the next we signed up for a class in old-time dancing’..." My own wall · 27 November 2025
5. Arts school for adults. "So I'm thinking about what you could do politically here. There's a thought buzzing around in my head about ‘arts school for adults’, but I haven't developed it any further..." My own wall · 13 November 2025

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