I ordered Bookworm by Lucy Mangan while I was in Australia and so it was waiting for me on my return and as soon as I could find time from the unpacking and washing and tidying up which follows a journey as surely as night follows day, I started to read it. And it was just as well I had done the aforementioned chores else they would have been totally abandoned as I wallowed in this glorious book and spent most of the afternoon shouting "Yes! Yes" as the author talked about a book she had loved, and her reading habits all of which mirrored mine in quite a scary fashion.
"I never deliberately ignored my mother's calls to come to lunch or dinner or to start cleaning my teeth and to get ready for bed. Like every bookworm before and since, I simply and genuinely didn't hear them"
Oh yes.
"People got strangely angry. a certain percentage of adult visitors would greet me with a disapproving 'every time I see you you have got your head in a book' or 'Don't you every go out in the fresh air?' or some variant thereof"
Oh yes.
I am proud to see that I never, and I can put my hand on my heart and swear this is true, uttered these words to my daughters all of 
whom read in varying degrees. The only time I did haul one of them out was when my youngest was closeted in her room studying for her A Levels and had not been seen for a whole day and had not eaten. I made her come out for half an hour and then let her disappear again. But other than that I have never disapproved of time spent reading.
Lucy Mangan takes us through the various stages of her reading and her favourite authors. Some of them are not mine I freely admit (I have never found Where the Wild Things are the masterpiece it is supposed to be and we will have to differ on Stig of the Dump) but most of the books she has read resonated with me very strongly and it is always a joy to find somebody with whom you feel such sympathy.
A delight to also find that she had her Blyton Years. Didn't we all? She rather disdained Wishing Chairs and the Faraway Tree and Noddy she was in thrall to 'alpha male Julian, dickless Dick (love this description of him), poor Anne, proto-feminist Sapphic role model George and her loyal rabbit loving dog Timmy'. She read the Adventure series and was thrilled at the thought of finding smugglers in coves, camping on moors and stuffing her face with home grown produce apparently handed out gladly by apple cheeked farmer's wives.
Well yes we all did.
I could never understand the disapproval of teachers and librarians regarding Blyton and their snobbish actions in not stocking her in local libraries. How very dare they? Blyton may not be the greatest writer in the world, but she made reading so enjoyable that even the most book hating child could learn that it was fun to read. And nobody reads Blyton for ever. It is a phase we all go through and then move onto other things. J Rowling may be a pretty poor and clunky writer but I admire her enormously for getting children to sit and read a book of over 600 pages and loving it. So more power to her elbow.
I was delighted to see that Lucy read Frances Hodgson Burnett, E Nesbit ('Daddy oh my Daddy' who can forget that cry in the film of the Railway Children. I once went to the station where that was filmed and stood on the platform calling out this line. My children, quite rightly went and hid round the corner), Louisa May Alcott and was seriously taken aback when the author admitted she had not enjoyed Anne of Green Gables on first acquaintance. I was shocked I tell you shocked, but then a page later I breathed a sigh of relief when she said she had tried her again and loved her.
Each page of this wonderful journey through childhood books brings back so many happy memories of when I, too, discovered the joy of reading. Lucy makes the point that 'apart from the pure and simple joy it brings, a love of reading grants you an easy life at school. It please teachers who assume you are clever and hardworking and it gives you a facility with language ….. and altogether eases your passage through life'
The facility with language is the part of that sentence that is so true – I often find myself using phrases and words that I know I have read somewhere. Not sure where but they are tucked away in the back of my brain and I often surprise myself when I trot them out. When you read all the content of the book soaks into your psyche and remains there always ready to bring you joy. Like the author I have nearly all my childhood books on my shelves (NOT the Famous Five ones as my mother threw them out on one mad occasion. I have never forgotten how I felt when I discovered that) and looking at my bookcases now I see Enid Blyton, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Lewis Carroll, Kenneth Grahame, Louise May Alcott, L M Montgomery and Elizabeth Enright. I will quite happily re-read them now in my fast approaching old age and find just as much pleasure and enjoyment in the familiar pages as I did years ago.
Do buy this book. I guarantee you will love it.
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