Lucy Mangan

spend her pocket money on amassing her own at home.

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.

I read because I loved it. I read
wherever I could, whenever I could, for as long as I could. At birthday parties – not least my own – I would stealthily retreat as soon as the games began, to the most hidden corner of whatever house I was in, gathering any available volumes on the way and reading furiously through them until a hateful adult found me and demanded my return or, if I was lucky, told me it was home time. In the summer holidays, I could read literally from dawn till dusk, unaware of anything until forcibly recalled to real life.

Those were the days, my friends. Those were the days. Do we ever manage again to commit ourselves as wholeheartedly and unselfconsciously as we do to the books we read when young? I doubt it.

I was a bookworm. For the true bookworm, life doesn’t really begin until you get hold of your first book. Until then – well, you’re just waiting, really. You don’t even know for what, at that stage – if you did, you would be making more noise about it and be less covered in court-shoe-shaped bruises. But it’s books.