Quick Reads are a series of short books by bestselling authors and celebrities. With no more than 128 pages, they are designed to encourage adults who do not read often, or find reading difficult, to discover the joy of books.
Quick Reads are a collaboration amongst leading publishers, supermarkets, bookshops, libraries, government departments, the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (NIACE), Arts Council England, the BBC, World Book Day, National Book Tokens and more. They are used as a resource for adult literacy teaching and have been used in Skills for Life and ESOL classes in colleges, community centres, libraries, prisons and workplaces across the country. They have also been used in hospitals, stroke recovery units, dyslexia centres, care homes, family learning groups, pre-schools, organisations working with homeless people and traveller communities, and Army and RAF bases. In a survey covering 50,000 new readers in 2010, 98% said that Quick Reads had made a positive impact on their lives.
Quick Reads were launched in the UK and Ireland by the then Prime Minister Tony Blair on World Book Day 2006. Since then, over 60 titles have been published, over 3 million copies have been sold and 2 million copies have been loaned through libraries.
Featured authors have included Gordon Ramsay, Chris Ryan, Danny Wallace, Andy McNab, Ricky Tomlinson, John Simpson, Colin Jackson, Scott Quinnell, Adele Parks, Kerry Katona, Minette Walters, Joanna Trollope, Alvin Hall, and Rolf Harris. The initiative also features seven books based on the popular Doctor Who series. An incomplete list of titles can be found on the Quick Reads website.