Welcome to another Tuesday celebrating bookish events, from Tuesday/First Chapter/Intros, hosted by Vicky from I’d Rather Be At The Beach who posts the opening paragraph (sometime two) of a book she decided to read based on the opening. Feel free to grab the banner and play along.
Every now and again as any good bookworm knows you spy a book that you know you simply HAVE to read. My excerpt this week comes from one such book – Bookworm: A Memoir of Childhood Reading by Lucy Mangan which will be published on 1 March 2018.
Blurb
When Lucy Mangan was little, stories were everything. They opened up new worlds and cast light on all the complexities she encountered in this one.
She was whisked away to Narnia – and Kirrin Island – and Wonderland. She ventured down rabbit holes and womble burrows into midnight gardens and chocolate factories. She wandered the countryside with Milly-Molly-Mandy, and played by the tracks with the Railway Children. With Charlotte’s Web she discovered Death and with Judy Blume it was Boys. No wonder she only left the house for her weekly trip to the library or to spend her pocket money on amassing her own at home.
In Bookworm, Lucy revisits her childhood reading with with, love and gratitude. She relives our best-beloved books, their extraordinary creators, and looks at the thousand subtle ways they shape our lives. She also disinters a few forgotten treasures to inspire the next generation of bookworms and set them on their way.
Lucy brings the favorite characters of our collective childhoods back to life – prompting endless re-readings, rediscoveries, and, inevitably, fierce debate – and brilliantly uses them to tell her own story, that of a born, and unrepentant, bookworm. Amazon
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First Chapter ~ First Paragraph ~ Intro
As this is a non-fiction book it seems fitting to take the first paragraph from the introduction
I still have all my childhood books. In fact, I have spent some of my happiest hours in recent months arranging them on the bespoke bookcases I had built under the sloping ceiling of my study for their ease and comfort. I may no longer imagine them, as I did thirty years ago, whispering companionably together at night when I have gone to bed, but I love them still. They made me who I am.
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Once I got over my jealousy that Lucy Mangan not only has her childhood books, but that they get to sit on bespoke shelves, I concentrated on that very last sentence of the first full paragraph – that is how I feel about my childhood books too.
So what do you think? Do the titles mentioned in the synopsis bring back vivid memories to you too? Would you like to read on?
