Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day, a day when lovers everywhere stare longingly into each other’s eyes over shared bowls of spaghetti. Or so I hear. My lonely boyfriend will be working late as I head to my evening writing class which is hosted by the very skillful Sally Rippin. The love of words is rife in this one.

But when every other Valentine’s Day is celebrated between couples falling in love – a day which often excludes the singles, the recently single, the too young to care, the too careless to care – 2012 offers a refreshing alternative that everyone can celebrate. Tomorrow is the 14th of February, and more importantly, the launch of the National Year of Reading. “But every year should be about reading!” I hear you say. And so it should be. But this year we’re celebrating it properly, with posters and banners and books aplenty. If you want to know more about NYOR head here.

And it seems that authors are celebrating too – because they’re certainly giving us some gold to read. I’ve just finished Doug MacLeod’s new book The Shiny Guys – a surreal, entertaining and thoughtful novel about mental illness and strange friendships and I loved it. So I opened the pages of Gabrielle Williams’ much anticipated new novel The Reluctant Hallelujah and already I’m loving that too. It bodes well for a year which is all about reading, that there is so much quality just waiting to be read. I for one, am hoping to read it all.

• Bec Kavanagh, Booked Out