A celebration of books and a love story to the written word that reveals how books help us connect with other readers through shared stories.
As a child, Lucy Mangan was reading all the time, using books to navigate the challenges and complexities of this world and many others. As an adult, she uses her new relationship with literature to seize upon the most important question: (how) do books prepare us for life?
Bookish vividly tells the story of a reader’s life from the cusp of teenagehood, when everything – including the way we read – undergoes a not-so-subtle transformation. Lucy vividly recounts her metamorphosis from young bookworm to bookish adult, from the way school curricula impact our relationship with literature, to the growing pains of swapping the pleasures of re-reading for those of book-hoarding.
Revisiting the books of all genres (from literary novels and historical saga fiction to apocalyptic zombie novels) that ferried her through each important stage of life—falling in love, finding a job, becoming a mother, and navigating grief—Bookish is a coming-of-age story told through books. It's an ode to our favorite bookish spaces (from the smallest secondhand bookstalls to our favorite libraries, mega-bookshops, and our own bookshelves) and a love story to how books not only shelter our souls through hard times, but also how they help us connect with the people we love through shared stories.

- 294 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub
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Information
Subtopic
Social Science BiographiesIndex
LiteratureTable of contents
- Cover
- Title Page
- Dedication
- Introduction: Hungry for Books
- Chapter 1: Flies, Rats and Mole: On Formative Novels
- Chapter 2: Mass Market: On the Joys of Genre Fiction
- Chapter 3: The Tyranny of Set Texts: On Reading the Canon
- Chapter 4: Dystopias, Decisions, Departure: On Academia
- Chapter 5: Dark Academia: On Studying the Classics
- Chapter 6: Guilty Pleasures: On Bookshops and Bonkbusters
- Chapter 7: By the Book: On Starting a Career
- Chapter 8: Book Lovers: On Romance Beyond the Page
- Chapter 9: A New Mother’s Life of Crime
- Chapter 10: A Library of One’s Own: On Curating a Book Collection
- Chapter 11: Like Father, Like Daughter: On Dad
- Conclusion: ‘Bookish’: A Life in Books
- Lucy’s Bookshelf
- Acknowledgements
- About the Author
- Copyright
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Yes, you can access Bookish by Lucy Mangan in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Literature & Social Science Biographies. We have over 1.5 million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.