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

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Much as I enjoyed the book and the muffled echoes of my own youthful (and lifelong) love of reading, my engagement with it began to weaken in the last quarter as the author moved into a rather woeful account of his struggles in running an (admirable) small publishing house. 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. If that was you, particularly if you grew up in a small northern town where people said the word "book" the way they said the word "voodoo", this is probably your story. The book begins with the author moving home and realising he has more books than he could read in his lifetime.

As they walk through the Lake District chomping on apples, “I half expected him to suggest a game of hide and seek”. Then the memoir element begins, a running thread that describes Hodkinson's relation to his schizophrenic grandfather. Up there, looking down, is a cabal of the advantaged and highly educated and, because they speak with most authority and articulacy, their taste becomes the defining taste and, should you share it, you are deemed to also be well read. Around that time, in my thirties, was probably when I began to accumulate books at a rate considerably greater than my capacity to read them.It's about a family who didn't see the point of reading, and a troubled grandad who taught Mark the power of stories. This develops into a memoir of his childhood (in the 1970s) and coming of age as a reader and eventually a working journalist. It's about schools (bad), music (good) and the people (some mad, a few sane), and pre-eminently and profoundly the books and authors (some bad, mostly good) that led the way, shaped a life. Once a year, every year, I read the book and the feeling remains the same; it still smarts with a lust for life. This is a book about the north; it is also about publishing, writing and music, but it transcends its subjects and meets the criterion Hodkinson sets out in his preface: "The best books, the same as the best days, skitter on the breeze.

You'd struggle to enjoy this unless you grew up in the 70s in the north of England, and slightly resent it.

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. Books have always been a refuge and, as Hodkinson points out, they will wait when life is a little crazy, always being there for you when you are ready. It’s an autobiography with parallel sections talking about his grandfather and his life and how it effected the author and his Mum. He owns Pomona Books and has published titles by Simon Armitage, Barry Hines, Ian McMillan, Ray Gosling, Stuart Murdoch (of Belle and Sebastian), Bob Stanley (Saint Etienne) and many more. His life story so far is a massive voyage of self-discovery, and he has some achievements in it that many would be justifiably proud of.