No One Round Here Reads Tolstoy: Memoirs of a Working-Class Reader

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The author's journey takes him through his time in local journalism, his adventures in publishing and his thoughts on various authors and bands. On one hand, by having such a collection and planning to read all these books, you are making a fantastic statement of hope and revealing an investment in future self,’ she said. I feel that this book really ran some parallels with my own upbringing, although there are some years between us. Books are very much the heart and soul of our library, but we do a lot more as well, although I’ve never put a cardboard box on my head abs pretended to be a clock… not yet anyway!

I started this on audio and switched to the actual book along the way which I found the better format to manage the switches between the author's life and his memories of his grandfather. This is a tale of the books that shaped the author's teens and twenties interwoven with an elegy to his grandfather who sustained a head-injury in a railway accident and suffered from mental health issues as a result. There was one book in the house, kept on the top of a wardrobe with other revered items such as his cycling proficiency certificate. uk) has published titles by Simon Armitage, Bob Stanley, Barry Hines, Ian McMillan, Hunter Davies, Ray Gosling, David Gedge, Stuart Murdoch (of Belle and Sebastian) and many more. Like him, I had a somewhat erratic education (a comprehensive school in East London) and, although I went to University, am mostly self-taught.The book begins with the author moving home and realising he has more books than he could read in his lifetime. All in all, Hodkinson's book is hugely enjoyable to me as I see something of myself in there (albeit swap punk music for dance, and my opinion on libraries differs to Mark's. The great benefit of ebooks is that you can highlight passages and then save the highlights apart from the book. His description of his various To Be Read piles was also nifty - shame his taste in books and mine don't match. It is not just about books though, it is about his take on life and is full of the happy and sad memories he still carries with him.

Indeed, later he has some trenchant and, I think, accurate criticisms of the way that a privileged elite still determine what is meant by “well read” and of how that same privileged elite dominates the publishing industry and the “literary” world. All the way through the book he punctuates his life story with snapshots of his grandfather and the life that he had. To begin with, Hodkinson adopts a familiar format: the books that made me a reader and this is interesting because it subverts the genre's familiar snobbishness. At that point, the books shifts into a slightly different perspective, more about Mark's career and how it intertwines his reading, and his reading drives his career. Hodkinson also weaves a tale of family tragedy throughout his text; these passages are beautifully and movingly written.At the same time as he was absorbing fiction he was also learning to be a journalist, playing in a band and writing music columns.

A resounding defence of the physical book and the thankless enthusiasts who bring it into existence . Mark's journey into his own cocoon of books is a deeply personal tale but one with universal themes for all young lives shaped and transformed in some way by the written word . Highly recommended for anyone who likes reading about other people’s relationship with books and stories (which I do).Obviously, a book about such a dedicated bibliophile has plenty of references to literature, but when we reach The Catcher in the Rye the praise really starts to sing. I am amazed at the variety, although my own TBRs have multiplied to take in the bedside and now the desk where books to be reviewed will languish.