WHAT do people want? That's a central tenet of life, really, but mostly of politics, the digging around for the answer to that question.

Not necessarily so politicians can give the people what they want, but so they can pretend to give it.

What people seem not to want is a politician who's also a reader. Why they don't want this appears to be bound together with their party persuasions, as with most things.

With all that might currently divide us, you'd think the First Minister recommending her favourite books might slip down to the section of the list sub-headed 'inconsequential' but, alas, no.

Nicola Sturgeon, famously a bookworm, routinely talks on Twitter about reading. Each time she does so you'd be forgiven for thinking she'd suggested book burning, rather than her latest favourite tome.

This isn't an affectation; she clearly has a real love of reading, posting a summer and winter reading list each year. She's also good at giving a boost to new Scottish authors.

Sturgeon was full of praise for Scabby Queen, the second novel by Kirstin Innes and you'd be daft to think this publicity wouldn't be a real boost.

It's hard to understand why a vocal love of books is taken to be a bad thing but the complaints are always fairly uniform: haven't you got anything better to do? Why don't you spend less time reading and more time running the country?

Sturgeon tweeted recently that taking "five minutes out of a busy day to read an Ali Smith interview is v good for the soul." Folk were raging. V raging. My favourite response was, "Take 5 minutes to evaluate your napper."

I hate to break it to the chap responsible for this pithy rejoinder but reading is nothing but napper evaluation.

There is a perception - shown through the indignation expressed towards a bookish First Minister - that reading is lazy. How can anything done silently sitting down be productive.

Anything useful I have ever learned has come from a novel. Empathy, understanding and insight into worlds other than your own lie there on the pages for the taking. If there were any skills we'd want politicians to be open to, surely we would want these.

The act of reading too, is vital for rest, recuperation and wellbeing. Of course running the country is a full time job but even full time employees need a bit of a break now and then. I'd rather have a politician who picked up the latest Curtis Sittenfeld in their downtime than used breaks to beget illicit children.

Sturgeon has said that reading helps her to relax and isn't that vital in a leader? Or are people seriously suggesting that it's preferable those in charge push themselves to breaking point?

For those who criticise Sturgeon for her book reading, are their criticisms equal? Do they also chide Boris Johnson for the performative way he shows off his book learning? The Prime Minister is well kent for being passionate about the classics. We know this because he tells us, peppering his speeches with unnecessary classical references.

Last year, in his speech to the UN, he casually dropped in some ancient Greek. There was weird sparring on Twitter on Christmas Eve last year when a clip of him reciting by rote some lines from the Iliad resurfaced online.

I suppose he thinks it gives him a bit of panache, to be trotting out the Greek. The study of classics is a useful intellectual resource but Johnson uses it to make himself look and, I imagine, feel superior.

I'd rather have a reading list of novels I might actually enjoy from someone possessed of a rich hinterland of stories than be gently befuddled by a line from Homer uttered by a man trying to make himself look statesmanlike while having the dignity of a stuffed badger.

That's a divide between those who read for pleasure and those who quote their reading to show off. There is fraternity among readers. We know and understand one another. It's not about impressing others with what you know, it's about finding common ground about what you love - and hate.

We must not ever allow the act of reading to become devalued. Books are a friend in lonely times, a salve in hard times and a route to other worlds. We know this. It's why we invest in early years reading and why book initiatives such as Dolly Parton's Imagination Library book gifting programme are so vital.

And yet we seem to forget that about reading into adulthood, we pass over it as a vital, life-long habit.

Lambast the First Minister for political failings, take that as read, but not as a champion of bookworms.

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