I had previously enjoyed Bookworm by the same author and this follows the reading journey of Lucy through her adult yearswith changing tastes and times.

Having studied English at Cambridge, Lucy talks about the texts which she either hated or loved during her University days. She found a love of Middle English literature but finds she hates other set texts or is nonplussed by them .
However, it's not all "high brow" literature as Lucy talks about the joys of "comfort" reads and talks about ones that have become hers. There are sections on "bonkbusters", the delights of Jilly Cooper, Shirley Conran etc and books that are more generally popular from "crime" novels to Romance novels. She isn't snobby about reading "genre" fiction.

As well as her reading itself, we follow her first jobs, meeting her husband and their book holidays in Norfolk. Usefully for me, she details the process of planning and having her special bookcases built, although she has space for a whole library room. I am planning new bookcases and actually had a picture of Lucy's library, so the detail she goes into is very useful practically.

Certain life stages are built in as she marries, becomes a mother and loses her beloved Dad. The whole time of lockdowns and Covid provides a counterpoint to the comedy within this book and light reflections.

Bookworm and Bookish will also provide you with a whole stack of recommendations that you pick up along the way as well as a whole section of recommendations at the end. It will certainly add to your TBR list/pile .
A book for anyone who always has their nose in a book, spend weekends in bookshops and bibliophiles everywhere.

Bookish by Lucy Mangan is a heartfelt, witty and deeply engaging memoir that explores the way books shape our lives and guide us through the most significant moments. Following on from her first book Bookworm, Mangan takes us through her teenage years and into adulthood, showing how her relationship with literature evolves as she navigates the challenges of life.

From the formative influence of GCSE reading lists to the bittersweet transition from re-reading cherished childhood favourites to the addictive joy of book hoarding, Mangan traces her journey with both humour and reflection. She vividly recounts the stories that have helped her through key life events—first love, a first job, marriage, motherhood, and the loss of loved ones—while exploring the intergenerational nature of reading and how our love for books can be passed down through families.

As someone who cherishes the intimate connection between people and their reading habits, I found this memoir to be a delight. Mangan’s writing is accessible and lively, making it easy to get lost in her words. I found myself laughing at her wit and nodding in agreement at the books she loves—and making a mental note of those I still want to read. For anyone who has ever been captivated by the world of books, Bookish is a perfect read, offering both nostalgia and inspiration. It is a celebration of how literature weaves through our lives and shapes our understanding of the world.

Read more at The Secret Book Review.

Lucy Mangan’s Bookish: How Reading Shapes Our Lives is about her passion (obsession?) for reading. It is a book for book-lovers – no, not just people who read a lot, but people who will never satisfy their roaring, howling, physical need to read another book. There is no point in reading Bookish if you cannot nod with recognition when you read statements such as “And that, of course, is why we buy hundreds more books than we can ever read each year” and why it’s so important to some of us to own a book rather than borrow it from a library. She describes childhood reading as “A new world to discover between every set of covers” – spot on, if you ask me – and I was delighted to find that someone else felt like the 10-year-old me with 2/6d in my pocket, enough to buy a new Armada book, wallowing in the pleasure of trying to decide which one to buy this time.

Initially, I was uncertain what the book was going to be about and where the author was leading us. I then realised that looking for any narrative arc is pretty much pointless. Although the chapters roughly follow the author’s development from teenager to middle-aged mum, the book is really the author’s attempt to create a brain-to-brain link with us in order to show us the visceral emotional responses that the best books can evoke in the reader; whether deep joy or great sadness. Think of the whole book as an extended conversation with someone who loves books as much as you do and who is bubbling over with eagerness to share a list of books that are important to her. Don’t worry, though. Mangan isn’t trying to convert you to her point of view with an evangelical fervour. In fact, I think it’s fair to say she doesn’t care whether you enjoy her recommendations or not. She knows why the books are important to her; wants you to share that knowledge; but then immediately moves on to share her next discovery. I very soon gave up trying to decide whether I should track a book down because the titles aren’t as important as her passion. I just lay back to let Mangan’s stream of consciousness sweep me along.

The author is not just someone who loves books, though. Mangan not only states that literature changed when Jane Austen published her books, but explains what Austen did that was so novel (ha! See what I did there?!). Apparently, Austen was the first author to use the “free indirect style”, which enabled her to subtly reveal so much more of her characters. When Mangan explains what that style is, you think, “Yes, of course! That’s exactly what Austen does that’s different to Fielding, Smollett, Reeves, etc!”

If you love books – and I mean really, really, love them, you should buy this book.

#Bookish #NetGalley

Enjoyable, if not as spectacularly so as ‘Bookworm’ 4

Mangan in an engaging and witty writer, this second outing of her detailed and life long account of her love affair with books felt less absorbing than that first book. Partly, I think because some of the wit and humour felt forced at times. Not surprising, as Mangan (like so many of us) foundered and struggled during Covid, and she also had major life changes which she described her – first, the upending of everything which parenting brings, and in her case struggles with post-natal depression. However, children grow, their being develops, and there is delight also to be found amidst the hard work times. More painful, the death of her beloved father. Such loss may become less agonising, but the loss remains.

My reason for the slight disappointment is two fold. Firstly, I have to admit I’m a more snobby, if less erudite reader than Mangan, and, moreover, a generation older. So this meant that when certain books came out, which she can appreciate as page turning reads – Dan Brown, and writers of all those Hollywood style bonkbusters about the rich and famous, - they only evoked the curled lip sneer in me which she fulminates against, as I had moved beyond ONLY wanting ‘what happens next’. I tried, back in the day, Lucy, flipping through pages in libraries and bookshops, but found the writing utterly appalling. Sorry.

Secondly, I did think some editing would have been an improvement. Mangan is very fond of extremely long sentences involving many clauses and subclauses, liberally scattering brackets and hyphens throughout them. Sometimes multiple combinations of both within the same sentence, so that by the time the sentence end is reached, this reader was left with dangling ends and confusion where to attach them!

She also, as with Bookworm, is a huge fan of footnotes. Not a problem in a wood book, where it is relatively easy to visually navigate and flip between main text and footnotes. A real headache in my ARC Kindle

My better humour, from these technical challenges, was much restored by the expanded reading suggestions of books applicable to the particular life stages or bookie nooks (genres) she had been exploring. So, this will certainly be a book which keeps on giving. Brown and Bonkbusterdom aside.

Another elongated love letter to books from Lucy Mangan that will stay with me for a long time. Any self-professed bookworm will recognise themselves in Mangan and the pure joy she describes some of her favourite books with immediately had me adding them to my already far too long for a lifetime TBR list.

I will happily recommend this book to everyone I know has enjoyed even a single book.

I absolutely loved Bookworm, Lucy’s earlier homage to childhood reading, which really could have been about me and Bookish is every bit as good. It carries on where Bookworm left off continuing her love of reading as she works through adolescence and into adulthood.
So many of the books she reads are ones that I too have treasured and I love her enthusiasm. We both have a passion and nostalgia for children’s books that continues throughout this book. She has me making lists of books that she loved and that I am yet to read and she extols the joy of visiting second hand book shops and finding just the right book at the right time.
I can highly recommend this to all bibliophiles, it is written in a very easy, friendly style and if Lucy would like to come and help me sort out my own library she would be very welcome.

My bookish soulmate. It's like seeing my thoughts arranged on paper articulately.

Loved Bookworm. Knew I'd feel the same about this, and it's even more so. If you're not a book addict, you won't understand the tears that form when you realise that your own absolute NEED to sit quietly with a book and not interact with the world for a bit is shared by other humans. That it isn't just you. That other people have that same relationship with stories that you do.

And to see Lucy's eclectic tastes steer her in every which way that her interests point, ahhhh, it was like coming home.

Taking up the story of the author's lifetime love affair with literature from her adolescence, book lovers will delight in seeing her journey through teenage years, university studies (ohh jealous - I still wish I could return and do the English degree I was destined for), unhappy and happy jobs, through to meeting a like-minded man, pregnancy and post-pregnancy issues, motherhood (and with it, back to the wonderful world of children's books afresh) and into middle age (no we aren't!).

Mangan is honest throughout - it's not high literature she seeks, it's pleasure, a thirst for stories and characters, knowledge and fascinations sated. So sometimes a Lee Child will do, other times it's Jane Austen.

We share a lot of both life experiences and reading experiences, and seeing my own craving for constant new stories was so satisfying it made me emotional. It's not just me.

Watching a life lived in books was such a pleasure for me. Reading how someone else experienced them, used them, needed them - it's something only a fellow reader will appreciate.

And seeing how books got the author through some truly upsetting and difficult moments in life was also so good to see put down on paper. That's what living multiple lifetimes with characters and writers can do for you. Seeing the author too find her true place in the world in a career she was surely born for was immensely satisfying. As was the construction of her eventual spiritual home (does she ever see her husband and child??!)

This is to be recommended, but to those people drawn to the title for the connection they can already see with the writer. You'll know who you are.

With thanks to Netgalley for providing a sample reading copy.

'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!

Having read and adored Lucy Mangan's Bookworm I was overjoyed to see a follow up in Bookish - a look at how a love of books progresses from childhood to midlife.
Part memoir and part tribute to some fantastic books, Lucy's writing is always warm, funny and nostalgic. The different stages of her life and the evolving bookworm profile was something I could certainly relate to. There were some really touching and poignant moments. I felt there could perhaps have been some tighter editing, there were some passages that didn't flow as clearly as others, there was also about a dozen uses of the word "paean" to describe her musings, which is about a dozen more times than I have ever read the word before so it quickly became repetitive.
However, if you have a passion for books, book collecting, the links to what stories we read at different times in our lives, or just would like a (very helpfully included) list of books to read into adulthood, this is a really lovely book and would again make a perfect gift for any bookish bookworm.

At times I really felt like Mangan was writing my own story both in book terms and life in general which made for a fascinating read and had me turning to my shelves and book journals and adding lots of books to my to be read pile.

I like how Mangan doesn't make this a bibliotherapy book in the traditional sense of recommending a book for a life happening but rather tells us what she was reading at points in her life that gave comfort.
I also think that I was chasing her around the second hand bookshops of Norfolk for a few years and that we were both hunting for/buying the same books!

Like a warm hug and a cosy chat with your oldest friend, it is also beautifully feminist and includes the perfect summary of why representation matters. It’s also really funny! And that’s the joy of this book. It pulls you in gently, makes you feel nicely at home in your book corner and then shows you how much work is still to be done to make the bookish corner and inclusive and equitable place.
Mangan’s passion and excitement is infectious. I had so many books and experiences in common; It was such a joy to reminisce about favourite authors and how they changed me and how much I learned from those formative books. But oh the reading list I now have! All the wonders that she describes that I haven’t discovered yet. And wow is she an enabler! I feel like she’s given me full permission, nay, encouragement, to buy all the books that bring me joy or might bring me joy later on; when I have time.
I want you all to read this book so we can chat about it endlessly and compare our reads together! Definitely one that will live on my shelves forever, making me glow every time I catch sight of it.

Having already read “Bookworm,” I was looking forward to continuing through the author's readings, which, being almost my age, reminded me of a lot of books I had “forgotten.” Unfortunately, the English environment is not the same as the one where I grew up, nor did I have a parent or husband to support me in this tsundoku mania of mine, but in my own small way I can consider myself quite satisfied even though I still don't have a studio with super high bookshelves nor even the ladder that moves, but you never can tell what fate will throw at us.

Avendo giá letto "Bookworm" non vedevo l'ora di proseguire attraverso le letture dell'autrice che, avendo quasi la mia etá, mi ha fatto ricordare un sacco di libri che avevo "dimenticato". Purtroppo l'ambiente inglese non é lo stesso dove sono cresciuta io, né ho avuto un genitore o un marito che mi appoggiasse in questa mia tsundoku mania, ma nel mio piccolo posso ritenermi abbastanza soddisfatta anche se non ho ancora uno studio con delle librerie cielo terra né tantomeno la scaletta che si muove, ma non si puó mai dire cosa ci riserva il destino.

Bibliophiles Delight..
A bibliophiles delight in this ode to reading, and the sheer love of books of all kinds, from Lucy Mangan. Bubbling over with insightful asides and enriched with warmth and joy, not to mention recommendations. A reader will recognise similar emotional ties with certain books from the past and the present. Sure to delight any bookworm, or indeed a budding one.

I loved Bookworm when it came out. Lucy Mangan and I are of a similar age and read for similar reasons. I found so much I recognised in Bookworm and also came away from it with a juicy reading list of the things that hadn't crossed both our paths. Bookish picks up where Bookworm left off and takes us through the rest of Lucy's reading life. I meant to eke this out slowly and ended up reading it in one, giant gulp I loved it so much.

There is a lot less crossover in our reading habits here than there was in our childhood reading, but the descriptions of what reading does for her, and how she has viscerally needed it, had me nodding my head in violent agreement. Here, even with books she has read and loved that I have read and didn't, I see the why and the workings of it. This is wonderful. I got very excited when I found out that someone else loves Astrid Lindgren's Bullerby Children series as much as me and it even made me think I might pick up a Jack Reacher next time I'm in a secondhand bookshop.

How I have not become Lucy Manghan’s best friend I do not know. I am the same age, was born in Lewisham hospital and bought up around Croydon / Bromley and I love books. Maybe it could still be arranged! I was very happy to get an early review copy of this book and I enjoyed it very much as I do all big book lists. Sad there was no mention of the Catford cat but I liked the story of her relationship with her husband and read some of these things out to my wife. I think they are both of the same ilk. Thanks NetGalley for the chance to review this.

It's been a number of years since I read Lucy Mangan's memoir of childhood reading, "Bookworm", and reading her follow up now, I had the same warm, fuzzy, slightly nostalgic feeling of how I used to read, rather than how I read now. Like Lucy, books have always been there for me when I need them and though I feel I am significantly more discerning in my tastes (I don't think I'll ever have a collection of 10,000+), reading this was like a soothing aloe balm for a burnt soul. As she browsed through the Cambridge bookshops, fumbled through the second hand treasure troves of Norfolk and Hay-on-Wye, it felt like I was there with her. I particularly loved her small section on visiting New York and having the same complete sense of overwhelm in The Strand as I did when I visited.

'Bookish' does feature quite a significant amount on children's literature, clearly a passion of the author's, which I didn't necessarily enjoy as much, but the writing was strong enough for me to continue through those chapters. Altogether, a charming and funny reminder of how important books are in our lives. It'll make you want to pick another one up just as you've closed the cover on this one.

I was lucky enough to receive this as an Arc Reader from NetGalley. I was intrigued by this book as it is non-fiction/memoir which is a genre I am interested in reading more of. I enjoyed this book overall, I liked that the author truly understands what it is to be a bookworm and everything that comes along with it. Those aspects where it was very autobiographical was really good but I feel a lot of the book was focused on giving synopsis of other books which didn’t feel relevant or enjoyable to me which is why I rated the book three stars.

I have yet to read Bookworm: A Memoir of Childhood Reading, although I have been meaning to read it ever since it came out, but you know how it is. This one came up on Netgalley so I immediately requested it and was delighted to be approved for an ARC.

This follows on from Bookworm: A Memoir of Childhood Reading, so whilst that one is about childhood reading, this one takes us through teen reading, set texts for Uni, and the books and book collecting that she has enjoyed throughout her life.

She comes across as my people; I haven't read a lot of what she read, I didn't even read The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4, by the time everyone else was reading that I had discovered P.G. Wodehouse and Agatha Christie, but I could completely relate to her feelings for books and for reading, and the comfort and joy she gets from it. (I was also rather pleased to have my unpopular opinion about Wuthering Heights validated).I

Reading her thoughts on Norah Lofts, an author I have been meaning to read for ages, had me searching the Backlisted podcast that she did about The Town House, and then, hearing John and Andy so enthusiastic sent me too the library, so now I am reading that one as well, and living it. I'm now looking forward to getting to many of the other books written about here, (Adrian Mole - better late than never). I will also be buying this one when it comes out, and Bookworm has moved to the top of the THE pile.

This is a wonderful, detailed and critically engaged loveletter to reading and to books. I haven't read Bookworm, but this book stands alone. I liked the way the sections followed a life, from teenage years to middle age. It meant nostalgia for a time spent discovering new possibilities in the local library but also a practical account of things relevant to me now , like how to thin down (very slightly) your collection.
I learnt about children's books which had come out since my children were at that stage. I also heard about books that are far older, like Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Mangan's ability to extoll the virtues of a book she enjoys is so compelling, and her excoriating dismissal of books she dislikes is very entertaining, whether I agree (Wuthering Heights) or disagree (Otessa Mosfegh). The way she makes her point gives me so much to reflect on. I've learnt about myself from reading this book as well as getting ideas for my next reads. As I read, I kept thinking of other people I would like to buy copies for. The only thing I'm not sure about is whether audio books aren't "real books" and that listening to them isn't reading. Personally, I find reading books easier than listening to them, and I know I'm quite unusual in that regard. For those who engage with books through audio recordings, this is a perfectly legitimate way to understand a text. It was reassuring that we didn't agree on everything.
Overall, a fabulous read.

Bookish : How Reading Shapes Our Lives. This is an interesting read for the bookworms out there. I love book recommendations and to see what someone else likes and is reading. My tastes and opinions differ from the authors in lots of the books and selections, but that is a good things. I have created a reading list of books I want to try from this, and found some exciting books I haven't heard of before. To be fair it was a bit of a Vulcan mind dump in places, and seemed as though the author wasn't taking a breath. I think I enjoyed the obsession with bookshop visits, and the process of organising her own library. It was interesting read even though I couldn't relate to the author as a person much..