I didn't love this book. Some parts were good. But I ended up skimming the rest.
Which is too bad, because I usually like Susan Hill. But even though I didn't end
up loving this particular book, I did love these four quotes from it:
"Cold room, warm bed, good book."
"I thought I had cleared out all the books I would ever need to lose five years ago, but books breed....As fast as I get one out of the back door, two new ones come in through the front."
"A book that cannot be returned to again and again, and still yield
fresh entertainment and insights, is only half a book."
"Reading is magic. Books are magic. It starts when we are shown picture books and realise there is another world beyond the everyday one we know. Once we can read ourselves, we live inside the magic. The only problem is that we have to emerge at the end of a book, and we don't want to leave and return to that dull domestic world we know. The only solution to that problem, of course, is that there is always the next book, and the next and there is bonus magic if it is another in a series we already love, so we are plunging back into a magic other world but one we already know. We feel a lift of the heart, a lurch of the stomach, when we find ourselves in it again."
If this book appeals to you, I'd suggest you read Susan Hill's Howard's End is on the Landing instead. It's also a memoir about books and reading, but of the two, I think it's the better read.
Happy Reading!
