As a child, Lucy Mangan was reading all the time, using books to navigate the challenges and complexities of this world and many others. As an adult, she uses her new relationship with literature to seize upon the most important question: (how) do books prepare us for life?
Bookish picks up where Bookworm left off: at the cusp of teenage, when everything - including the way we read - undergoes a not-so-subtle transformation. Here, Mangan vividly recounts her metamorphosis from bookworm to bookish adult, from the way GCSE curricula can impact our relationship with literature to the growing pains of swapping the pleasures of re-reading for those of book-hoarding. Revisiting the specific stories that ferried her through navigating various important stages of life - first love, first job, marriage, motherhood, and grief - Bookish maps the author's coming-of-age in books and life lessons and sheds valuable light on how a love for reading can be nurtured intergenerationally.
'A bookworm's delight' Sara Collins | 'A gorgeous hug of a book - funny, warm and charming' Marian Keyes | 'Comforting, funny and moving' Sali Hughes | 'Lucy Mangan on books is like butter on toast: perfect' Caitlin Moran | [Mangan] makes for a wonderfully incisive critic' ObserverA love letter to all those who come alive when they pull a new treasure off the shelf, stay up late reading just one more page and pack their suitcases with clothes wedged between books instead of the other way around. From exploring the stacks as a student, to finding her feet as a bookseller-turned-journalist, falling for a fellow bookworm in an independent bookshop, escaping the doldrums of new motherhood and finally building a (book) room of her own, Bookish is the story of a life spent falling in love with reading. Bookworm author Lucy Mangan chronicles her years of buying, borrowing and hoarding everything from well-worn literary classics to steamy bonkbusters, gripping thrillers, young adult novels and other not-so-guilty pleasures. Brimming with literary insights, wry observations and stellar recommendations, this book is an ode to the bookish places - from local libraries to bookstores big and small - and the stories that make us who we are.
