Scan barcode
csgiansante's review against another edition
1.0
Boomer laments things. Didn't age well. Wouldn't recommend. Picked this up because it seemed to have a promising title. It did not follow through on that promise.
bumsonseats's review against another edition
2.0
I had high expectations for this one but got bored fairly quickly. Probably because I read different books as a child and because the author comes across as a know-it-all. Interesting facts about Laura Ingalls though.
davidsteinsaltz's review against another edition
3.0
Fascinating private account of a bookish childhood in West Midlands university town, and an analysis of the books that got him through it. Somewhat limited by the fact that the author has no supplementary interest to me, and the analysis is not overwhelmingly brilliant, nor is it systematic.
lilyevangeline's review against another edition
5.0
"With its conventions that mimic the three dimensions of the world off the page, and its simulations of time passing as measured by experience's ordinary clocks, we hope it can bring a fully uttered clarify to the living we do, which is, we know, so hard to disentangle and articulate. And when it does, when a fiction does trip a profound recognition...the reward is more than an inert item of knowledge. The book becomes part of the history of our self-understanding. The stories that mean most to us join the process by which we come to be securely our own."
Despite the abrupt ending and the (unnecessary) meander into child psychology, this book rather perfectly summed up how and why I read growing up, my general approach to stories, and the ways this has built me into myself as a reader. I especially appreciated the perception of reading as an addiction, and not necessarily a positive one--the odd cultural consensus of reading as being somehow an inherently beneficial use of time and an intrinsically good character trait benefits neither readers nor non-readers. Like any addiction, it is always a worthwhile and healthy to ask yourself why, which is what Francis Spufford does for himself--and perhaps, at times, for the rest of us--here, and I'd say he does it rather well.
newishpuritan's review against another edition
Among other things, this contains one of the best descriptions of why science fiction is exciting reading, especially for teenagers.
juliana_aldous's review against another edition
5.0
"When I caught the mumps, I couldn't read; when I went back to school again, I could. The first page of The Hobbit was a thicket of symbols, to be decoded one at a time and joined hesitantly together...
I. N. In. A. In a. h, o, l, e. In a hole. I,n,t,h,e,g,r,o,u,n,d. In a hole in the ground. L-i-v-e-d-a-h-o-b-b-i-t. In a hole in the ground lived a hobbit...And then I never stopped again."
Author Francis Spufford takes you on a journey back through the stories and books that made him and may have also made you. From The Forest of fairy tales where the fear is being on your own, the books where you stepped through and landed into another world like Narnia, the towns like those in the Little House series and To Kill A Mockingbird that teaches you about the lives of others and societal expectations. You may find many favorites you share with Spufford from Pooh to Tolkien and authors like Bradbury, King, to Le Guin.
I recently read his first novel, Golden Hill, and then picked this book up. I highly recommend Golden Hill if you like historical fiction. I enjoyed Spufford's insights in this book and I found an author who feels like as Anne Shirley would say, "a kindred spirit."
I. N. In. A. In a. h, o, l, e. In a hole. I,n,t,h,e,g,r,o,u,n,d. In a hole in the ground. L-i-v-e-d-a-h-o-b-b-i-t. In a hole in the ground lived a hobbit...And then I never stopped again."
Author Francis Spufford takes you on a journey back through the stories and books that made him and may have also made you. From The Forest of fairy tales where the fear is being on your own, the books where you stepped through and landed into another world like Narnia, the towns like those in the Little House series and To Kill A Mockingbird that teaches you about the lives of others and societal expectations. You may find many favorites you share with Spufford from Pooh to Tolkien and authors like Bradbury, King, to Le Guin.
I recently read his first novel, Golden Hill, and then picked this book up. I highly recommend Golden Hill if you like historical fiction. I enjoyed Spufford's insights in this book and I found an author who feels like as Anne Shirley would say, "a kindred spirit."
mat_tobin's review against another edition
4.0
This very much felt like a book of two halves for me but both halves were enjoyable and intriguing in their own ways. For the first half, I felt we experienced the literature that Spufford encountered as a child and the effect that these books had on him during that period. The latter part of the book (probably last third rather than half) was more of a reflection on what it is that this literature does and his search for books and a sense of enjoyment that he so relished in his early youth. Much of this change was down to the fact that by the time he reached his young adult years, the teenage (YA) market hadn’t really been invented as such as so he was caught between swimming in science fiction (I loved his short piece on Le Guin) and adult literature which just didn’t always work for him. Spufford’s writing is almost essay-like here but I enjoyed it. Orderly, organised, no side ramblings here at all but ever so insightful into the world of words. Incredibly so.
gillothen's review against another edition
3.0
Slightly disappointed. The book is structured chronologically, but with a hefty amount of added psychology and philosophy which sometimes obscures the actual books.
jobinsonlis's review against another edition
3.0
I liked this book less this time than I apparently did before (I have no memories of this book but it had a higher rating from me several years ago). It’s not really a piece of literary criticism and it’s not really an autobiography. I’m not sure what it is. The author isolates some broad ideas and broadly ruminates on them, occasionally offering devastating peeks into his childhood that raise more questions for me than they answered. I enjoyed it when he focused down on specific authors—C.S. Lewis, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Laura Ingalls Wilder were the big ones—but I didn’t always find the bigger statements he was making around them that interesting. It might be because his childhood literary touchstones weren’t mine—I loved horror as soon as I could—but mostly I think he was keeping his audience at a distance, which doesn’t work that well when you’re the subject you’re writing about. He doesn’t owe anybody an examination of his childhood but also, I mean, he’s the one that brought it up.