Member Review
Review by
Stephen D, Educator
'Bookworm: A Memoir of Childhood Reading' was probably my all-time favourite book about books. Not only did it rekindle my love of many forgotten childhood classics and introduce me to new authors I'd forgotten (not least Antonia Forest, for which I will be forever grateful), but more than any other writer, Lucy Mangan seemed to get what it means to be a book-lover, someone who belongs totally to the world of books and would always rather be reading than doing anything else.
The equally wonderful 'Bookish' picks up where 'Bookworm' left off and follows Mangan and her reading habits through the vicissitudes of adolescence and adult life: school exams, university, the world of work, relationships, marriage and motherhood. Unsurprisingly, Mangan's tastes change and develop, taking in George Orwell, William Golding and Jane Austen, but she continues to enjoy revisiting childhood favourites and remains insistent on reading to please herself and nobody else. So she is refreshingly unapologetic about her enjoyment of Dan Brown, Lee Child, and bonkbusters by Jacqueline Susann and Shirley Conran.
Once again, there is so much to enjoy in Mangan's writing, from hearing her wax lyrical about one's own favourite reads, in my case Alice Walker's 'The Color Purple' and Dodie Smith's 'I Capture the Castle', to discovering new writers whom she describes so appealingly that you feel you simply have to read them yourself - I am now dying to explore Norah Lofts and E. L. Konigsburg. She is able to evoke the deep pleasures of municipal libraries, bookshops of all sorts (from second-hand bookshops in Norfolk to Strand Books in New York) and being in a position to build and curate one's own home library. She is consistently funny and self-aware about her own foibles as a bookworm - I laughed out loud at her account of attempting to read Edward Rutherfurd's 1,328-page epic 'London' during and after childbirth ('yes, it did fall on the baby, several times, no, not on his head, just on his heavily swaddled and nappied body. I figured it was something that he should get used to.')
It is also a deeply honest and often moving book, not just about being bookish but also about being an introvert in a world that often seems designed for extroverts. Life presents Mangan with many challenges, not all of which seem ideally suited to her, but she also shows rather touchingly how she finds ways to allow the world to accommodate itself to her temperament and needs. Many readers will recognise themselves in Mangan's descriptions of herself and draw great comfort from her writing.
This is a book which will fill every bookworm's heart with joy. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an ARC to review!
The equally wonderful 'Bookish' picks up where 'Bookworm' left off and follows Mangan and her reading habits through the vicissitudes of adolescence and adult life: school exams, university, the world of work, relationships, marriage and motherhood. Unsurprisingly, Mangan's tastes change and develop, taking in George Orwell, William Golding and Jane Austen, but she continues to enjoy revisiting childhood favourites and remains insistent on reading to please herself and nobody else. So she is refreshingly unapologetic about her enjoyment of Dan Brown, Lee Child, and bonkbusters by Jacqueline Susann and Shirley Conran.
Once again, there is so much to enjoy in Mangan's writing, from hearing her wax lyrical about one's own favourite reads, in my case Alice Walker's 'The Color Purple' and Dodie Smith's 'I Capture the Castle', to discovering new writers whom she describes so appealingly that you feel you simply have to read them yourself - I am now dying to explore Norah Lofts and E. L. Konigsburg. She is able to evoke the deep pleasures of municipal libraries, bookshops of all sorts (from second-hand bookshops in Norfolk to Strand Books in New York) and being in a position to build and curate one's own home library. She is consistently funny and self-aware about her own foibles as a bookworm - I laughed out loud at her account of attempting to read Edward Rutherfurd's 1,328-page epic 'London' during and after childbirth ('yes, it did fall on the baby, several times, no, not on his head, just on his heavily swaddled and nappied body. I figured it was something that he should get used to.')
It is also a deeply honest and often moving book, not just about being bookish but also about being an introvert in a world that often seems designed for extroverts. Life presents Mangan with many challenges, not all of which seem ideally suited to her, but she also shows rather touchingly how she finds ways to allow the world to accommodate itself to her temperament and needs. Many readers will recognise themselves in Mangan's descriptions of herself and draw great comfort from her writing.
This is a book which will fill every bookworm's heart with joy. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an ARC to review!
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