Bookish: A Love Letter to Reading

Lucy Mangan’s Bookworm, about the joys of children’s literature, was a little overwhelming. That’s not a criticism; rather, she wrote in such detail about all the books she’d read as a child that my mind reeled at the detail she dived into. She seemed to have read every book written for children – in English – ever! And while I’d read a lot of them, I hadn’t read nearly as many as her – probably about a quarter actually - so had no frame of reference for most of her comments. 

(It did introduce me to Gwen Grant’s Private – Keep Out though, and for that I’ll be grateful for the rest of my days.)

Bookish is – well, for me at least – far more accessible. Mainly because I’ve read just about all the books she writes about and so can involve myself more deeply in her thoughts and judgements. 

And it’s pure pleasure to discover them. She takes in everything from early YA, to set texts at school, to an English Lit degree at Cambridge, bonkbusters and bestsellers… Lucy Mangan likes to read! And her enthusiasm makes me want A) to run right out and ransack my nearest bookshop and B) take another crack at The Da Vinci Code. (Which I think is probably the worst-written book ever published, but which she continued reading, even when a snotty colleague at the Guardian wondered out loud why she was wasting her time on such rubbish. Because, she says, she was enjoying the story, and if that isn’t the definition of a good time with a book, what is?)

Lucy Mangan just likes to read, and Bookish is a loving, wonderfully entertaining tribute to doing just that.