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

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My dad considered reading and writing to be predominantly a feminine pastime, much the same as, say, sewing or netball. I feel that this book really ran some parallels with my own upbringing, although there are some years between us.

If you are a person who likes to read and considers yourself “well-read,” I would venture to say this book is for you. The young Hodkinson read those books but found the protagonists too earthbound, too fixed in their northern locales. 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. A recent house move involved 100 boxes of books and so I could relate completely to the opening scene where the author is moving house and friends and family helping with the move ask him why he has so many books and how many he has. The great benefit of ebooks is that you can highlight passages and then save the highlights apart from the book.Once a year, every year, I read the book and the feeling remains the same; it still smarts with a lust for life. 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 . Its true that the nearest i've got to Rochdale is listening to the Mike Harding record when I myself was a kid. Without spoiling it really, I will suffice to say that this book triples as a personal memoir, a kind of history of literature, and also a love song to books and the passion of reading.

His father had only one title, "Folklore, Myths and Legends of Britain," which was to be treated carefully.I work in a library and we are fighting to stay open with a diminishing readership as Kindles and e readers take over, and ‘real’ books fall by the wayside. But his love of books was apparently innate and irrepressible; it didn't seem like he had to sacrifice for it. I think, to you, books are metaphorical friends and part of the reason you have so many is that, ever so slightly and in a perfectly normal way, you have lost a little bit of trust in the world.

Highly recommended for anyone who likes reading about other people’s relationship with books and stories (which I do). Girlfriends and partners are mentioned but never developed beyond these single references- a conscious decision perhaps not to lose focus from his love of books.It's about the schools, the music, the people - but pre-eminently and profoundly the books and authors that led the way and shaped his life. The author's journey takes him through his time in local journalism, his adventures in publishing and his thoughts on various authors and bands. From the discovery of a copy in Boots the Chemist, who once were booksellers, to the fact the author still reads the book once a year. Mark's asides about his granddad really resonate with me, as my nan had Alzheimers during most of my early teens and would often escape from home and be found wandering towards her own childhood home.

Interspersed with this are accounts of family life; his mentally ill grandad and friendships made and lost. It’s about a family who didn’t see the point of reading, and a troubled grandad who taught Mark the power of stories. 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. That was something that I learned from my mother, from teachers at Balderstone Community School, and from life. Most people experience this or similar and the pain is such that, in many different ways, they make preparations so that it either doesn’t happen again, and that can go as far as avoiding future relationships altogether, or setting down to themselves a clearly defined coping mechanism.

They were not the inspiration of his writing and reading, nor the reason he has now accumulated 3,500 books. Perhaps that’s why I so enjoyed the way he talks about literature, some negative remarks about one of my own works excepted.