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The Child that Books Built
Fairy tales and Where the Wild Things Are, The Lord of the Rings and the Narnia books, Little House on the Prairie and The Earthsea Trilogy. What would you find if you went back and re-read your favourite books from childhood? Francis Spufford discovers both delight and sadness, in this widely celebrated memoir of a boy who retreats into books, faced with a tragedy in his family.
'A beautifully composed and wholly original memoir, sounding the classics of children's literature.' David Sexton, Evening Standard
'Exuberant and serious, funny and sophisticated, this memoir of reading and childhood is a delight.' Andrea Ashworth
'A beautifully composed and wholly original memoir, sounding the classics of children's literature.' David Sexton, Evening Standard
'Exuberant and serious, funny and sophisticated, this memoir of reading and childhood is a delight.' Andrea Ashworth
224 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2002
67 people are currently reading
2321 people want to read
About the author
Francis Spufford
20 books789 followersOfficially, I was a writer of non-fiction for the first half of my career, and I certainly enjoyed scraping up against the stubborn, resistant, endlessly interesting surface of the real world. I like awkwardness, things that don't fit, things that put up a struggle against being described. But when I was excited by what I was writing about, what I wanted to do with my excitement was always to tell a story. So every one of my non-fiction books borrowed techniques from the novel, and contained sections where I came close to behaving like a novelist. The chapter retelling the story of Captain Scott's last Antarctic expedition at the end of "I May Be Some Time", for example, or the thirty-page version of the gospel story in "Unapologetic". It wasn't a total surprise that in 2010 I published a book, "Red Plenty", which was a cross between fiction and documentary, or that afterwards I completed my crabwise crawl towards the novel with the honest-to-goodness entirely-made-up "Golden Hill". This was a historical novel about eighteenth century New York written like, well, an actual eighteenth century novel: hyperactive, stuffed with incident, and not very bothered about genre or good taste. It was elaborate, though. It was about exceptional events, and huge amounts of money, and good-looking people talking extravagantly in a special place. Nothing wrong with any of that: I'm an Aaron Sorkin fan and a Joss Whedon fan, keen on dialogue that whooshes around like a firework display. But those were the ingredients of romance, and there were other interesting things to tell stories about, so my next novel "Light Perpetual" in 2021 was deliberately plainer, about the lives that five London children might have had if they hadn't been killed in 1944 by a German rocket. Ordinary lives, in theory; except that there are no ordinary lives, if you look closely enough. It was longlisted for the Booker Prize. Then in 2023 I returned to strong forms of story, and to plotting more like "Golden Hill", with a noir crime novel called "Cahokia Jazz", set in the 1922 of a different timeline, where a metropolis full of Native Americans stood on the banks of the Mississippi. I was aiming for something like a classic black and white movie, except one you never saw, because it came from another history than our own. It won the Sidewise Award for alternate history. And now (2025/6) I've written a historical fantasy, "Nonesuch", set during the London Blitz, where as well as German bombs the protagonist Iris needs to deal with time-travelling fascists, and the remnants of Renaissance magic, preserved in the statues of the burning city. As writers of fantasy, I like C S Lewis, Ursula Le Guin, John Crowley, Tamsyn Muir, Guy Gavriel Kay, Katherine Addison. If you like them, you may like this.
Biography: I was born in 1964, the child of two historians. I'm married to the Dean of an Anglican cathedral in eastern England, I have two daughters, and I teach writing at Goldsmiths College, London.
Biography: I was born in 1964, the child of two historians. I'm married to the Dean of an Anglican cathedral in eastern England, I have two daughters, and I teach writing at Goldsmiths College, London.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 173 reviews
August 28, 2013
I noticed that many on Goodreads found this disappointing. In some respects I can understand this since the book of the title and the blurb on the back would appear not to be what is actually on the pages. There is precious little actual memoir. We are given the sketchiest of details about Spufford's life and not as much about the actual books as you might presume ought to be in such a book (although there is, obviously, a quantity of that).
The book was, however, fascinating to me for many reasons. What it did do was to critically examine the reading experience both as a child and teenager. Spufford writes lucidly and well. He engages in interesting literary analysis of the books which most emotionally affected him as a child and adolescent while also speculating (with the help of psychoanalysis, child development studies drawing on the work of Piaget and his critics, philosophy and theology) on why we read, the function of story and its effect on us. He waxes lyrical on the transformative power of books, how stories teach you about human nature, society and so on without, in my opinion, being too opinionated or didactic.
There is a strong emphasis, too, on escapism. Stories serve as a safe place where we can examine the scary or disconcerting elements of our life without it being too immediate or obviously about us. They provide a certain amount of detachment.
Although his book is primarily about the solitary experience of reading, he does touch on the way in which it can be communal:
"A reader feels alone in a book, but is actually one of a crowd, all occupying the same points in textual space, all making a hubbub that none of them can hear." (p221)
In sum, then, I enjoyed reading this book. It gave me fewer pointers for exploring children's literature than I had hoped (although the fact that his reading path and my own were so similar was gratifying since there were many moments of recognition) and the sparseness of actual memoir was a shame - I felt that I as a reader never truly got to know him. But perhaps that was the point - to focus on the books and their universality (in terms of how they communicate to many people but in different ways, although often for similar reasons).
His last paragraph is beautiful and speaks, perhaps, for many readers:
"Except for this one scene, which repeats, in spite of all the self-knowledge I have ever been able to muster. I've f****d things up again. My heart is broken. I have lost my life's jewel. I am inconsolable. I go into a bookshop. And as I walk down the aisles, I remember that in every novel there are reverses, that all plots twist and turn, that sadness and happiness are just the materials authors use, in arrangements I know very well; and at that thought the books seem to kindle into a kind of dim life all round me, each one unfolding its particular nature into my awareness without urgency, without haste, as if a column of grey, insubstantial smoke were rising from it, softening the air, filling it with words and actions which are all provisional, which could all be changed for others, according to taste. Among these drifting pillars, the true story of my life looks no different; it is just a story among stories, and after I have been reading for a while, I can hardly tell any more which is my own".
The book was, however, fascinating to me for many reasons. What it did do was to critically examine the reading experience both as a child and teenager. Spufford writes lucidly and well. He engages in interesting literary analysis of the books which most emotionally affected him as a child and adolescent while also speculating (with the help of psychoanalysis, child development studies drawing on the work of Piaget and his critics, philosophy and theology) on why we read, the function of story and its effect on us. He waxes lyrical on the transformative power of books, how stories teach you about human nature, society and so on without, in my opinion, being too opinionated or didactic.
There is a strong emphasis, too, on escapism. Stories serve as a safe place where we can examine the scary or disconcerting elements of our life without it being too immediate or obviously about us. They provide a certain amount of detachment.
Although his book is primarily about the solitary experience of reading, he does touch on the way in which it can be communal:
"A reader feels alone in a book, but is actually one of a crowd, all occupying the same points in textual space, all making a hubbub that none of them can hear." (p221)
In sum, then, I enjoyed reading this book. It gave me fewer pointers for exploring children's literature than I had hoped (although the fact that his reading path and my own were so similar was gratifying since there were many moments of recognition) and the sparseness of actual memoir was a shame - I felt that I as a reader never truly got to know him. But perhaps that was the point - to focus on the books and their universality (in terms of how they communicate to many people but in different ways, although often for similar reasons).
His last paragraph is beautiful and speaks, perhaps, for many readers:
"Except for this one scene, which repeats, in spite of all the self-knowledge I have ever been able to muster. I've f****d things up again. My heart is broken. I have lost my life's jewel. I am inconsolable. I go into a bookshop. And as I walk down the aisles, I remember that in every novel there are reverses, that all plots twist and turn, that sadness and happiness are just the materials authors use, in arrangements I know very well; and at that thought the books seem to kindle into a kind of dim life all round me, each one unfolding its particular nature into my awareness without urgency, without haste, as if a column of grey, insubstantial smoke were rising from it, softening the air, filling it with words and actions which are all provisional, which could all be changed for others, according to taste. Among these drifting pillars, the true story of my life looks no different; it is just a story among stories, and after I have been reading for a while, I can hardly tell any more which is my own".
March 12, 2017
I want to quote practically all of this wonderful book. The only other time I’ve felt such kinship with an author writing about reading was Alberto Manguel, notably in The Library at Night. Although I was an only child rather than having a chronically ill younger sister, my childhood experience of books was very similar to Spufford’s. Of course he is able to articulate it much more elegantly than I ever could. On the very first page, he describes reading just as I experience it:
Spufford talks of his childhood reading in terms of an addiction. It was similar for me. I read constantly, voraciously. All other hobbies were fleeting. What’s more, I read many of the same books as he did. Since I’m about fifteen years younger, the Puffin editions I read were from the library and charity shops. His chapter on the Little House on the Prairie series took me back to the age of eight, perhaps nine. I had a paperback copy that I once re-read from cover to cover while sitting cross-legged on my wooden desk under the velux window. When I got to the end and re-entered the world, I realised dusk had fallen. Possibly not unrelated to this kind of behaviour, I shortly afterwards started wearing glasses.
In a similarly adroit vein to Alberto Manguel, Spuffold combines his reading memoir with wider reflections on history, linguistics, philosophy, and psychology. I love it when books draw linkages like this, as such tapestry-weaving allegorises the most satisfying type of synoptic reading. It's wonderful when novels or non-fiction fill gaps in my mind that I didn’t even realise existed and seed new ideas by catalysing links between concepts that were previously separate. Added to descriptions of the exact experiences I’ve had too, how could I fail to adore ‘The Child that Books Built’? Here is another experience I’ve had, of building my vocabulary through inference from context. This still happens whenever I read French.
And another thought plucked straight out of my ten year old head:
Predictably, I had the same delirious response to The Chronicles of Narnia that Spufford describes, ditto The Lord of the Rings and His Dark Materials. However, I’ve also always loved non-fiction that transported me elsewhere: history, astronomy, and geology were all primary school fascinations. My transition to ‘grown-up’ books also parallels Spufford’s: unlike most of my friends, I didn’t start with the classics, instead becoming obsessed with science fiction. As a result, I only read my first Jane Austen last year, whereas sci-fi has been my favourite fiction genre since I turned thirteen. I recall a period of Hercule Poirot mysteries at the age of eleven and a fixation with P.G. Wodehouse shortly after, however my High School years were dominated by mid-to-late 20th century sci-fi. This was accompanied by non-fiction about the French Revolution, once I'd discovered it at the age of 16. My version of Spufford’s utopian interest in anarchism was a fascination with Robespierre and the principles of liberté, égalité, et fraternité (ou la mort).
Needless to say, this book provoked intense nostalgia. Not the sad kind of nostalgia that yearns for the past, rather the kind that vividly transports you back to joyfully appreciate the moments that made you who you are now. What is really conveyed by ‘The Child that Books Built’, better than practically anything else, is the sheer importance of reading. I am another child that books built and my childhood would have been dull and empty without reading. I simply cannot imagine having spent it otherwise, without having become someone fundamentally different. In theory I know that there are people who during childhood played outside in big groups, presumably sports of some kind. That was always alien to me. I was a largely antisocial girl who liked to curl up in a little corner then travel through time and space via books. If you were of similar inclination, you will find in Francis Spufford a kindred spirit. The memoir ends abruptly, but I didn’t mind, because wherever it halted would have been arbitrary. My childhood reading shaded imperceptibly into my teenage then adult reading, which I have every expectation will continue until I’m dead. For Spufford I imagine it’s similar; I think any true reading memoir will always be incomplete.
As my concentration on the story in my hands took hold, all sounds faded away. My ears closed. I didn’t imagine the process of the cut-off like a shutter dropping, or as a narrowing of the pink canals inside, each waxy cartilaginous passage irising tight like some deft alien doorway in Star Trek. It seemed more hydraulic than that. Deep in the mysterious ductwork an adjustment had taken place with the least possible actual movement, an adjustment chiefly of pressure. There was an airlock in there. It sealed to the outside so it could open to the inside.
Spufford talks of his childhood reading in terms of an addiction. It was similar for me. I read constantly, voraciously. All other hobbies were fleeting. What’s more, I read many of the same books as he did. Since I’m about fifteen years younger, the Puffin editions I read were from the library and charity shops. His chapter on the Little House on the Prairie series took me back to the age of eight, perhaps nine. I had a paperback copy that I once re-read from cover to cover while sitting cross-legged on my wooden desk under the velux window. When I got to the end and re-entered the world, I realised dusk had fallen. Possibly not unrelated to this kind of behaviour, I shortly afterwards started wearing glasses.
In a similarly adroit vein to Alberto Manguel, Spuffold combines his reading memoir with wider reflections on history, linguistics, philosophy, and psychology. I love it when books draw linkages like this, as such tapestry-weaving allegorises the most satisfying type of synoptic reading. It's wonderful when novels or non-fiction fill gaps in my mind that I didn’t even realise existed and seed new ideas by catalysing links between concepts that were previously separate. Added to descriptions of the exact experiences I’ve had too, how could I fail to adore ‘The Child that Books Built’? Here is another experience I’ve had, of building my vocabulary through inference from context. This still happens whenever I read French.
I remember there was an intermediate stage when strange words did not quite yet have a meaning of their own, but possessed a kind of atmosphere of meaning, which was a compromise between the meanings of all the other words which seemed to come up in conjunction with the unknown one, and which I had decided had a bearing on it. The holes in the text grew over, like this. The empty spaces thickened, took on qualities which at first were not their own, then became known in their own right.
And another thought plucked straight out of my ten year old head:
My favourite books were the ones that took books’ implicit status as other worlds, and acted on it literally, making the window of writing a window into imaginary countries. I didn’t just want to see in books what I saw anyway in the world around me, even if it was perceived and understood and articulated from angles I could never have achieved; I wanted to see things I never saw in life. More than I wanted books to do anything else, I wanted them to take me away.
Predictably, I had the same delirious response to The Chronicles of Narnia that Spufford describes, ditto The Lord of the Rings and His Dark Materials. However, I’ve also always loved non-fiction that transported me elsewhere: history, astronomy, and geology were all primary school fascinations. My transition to ‘grown-up’ books also parallels Spufford’s: unlike most of my friends, I didn’t start with the classics, instead becoming obsessed with science fiction. As a result, I only read my first Jane Austen last year, whereas sci-fi has been my favourite fiction genre since I turned thirteen. I recall a period of Hercule Poirot mysteries at the age of eleven and a fixation with P.G. Wodehouse shortly after, however my High School years were dominated by mid-to-late 20th century sci-fi. This was accompanied by non-fiction about the French Revolution, once I'd discovered it at the age of 16. My version of Spufford’s utopian interest in anarchism was a fascination with Robespierre and the principles of liberté, égalité, et fraternité (ou la mort).
Needless to say, this book provoked intense nostalgia. Not the sad kind of nostalgia that yearns for the past, rather the kind that vividly transports you back to joyfully appreciate the moments that made you who you are now. What is really conveyed by ‘The Child that Books Built’, better than practically anything else, is the sheer importance of reading. I am another child that books built and my childhood would have been dull and empty without reading. I simply cannot imagine having spent it otherwise, without having become someone fundamentally different. In theory I know that there are people who during childhood played outside in big groups, presumably sports of some kind. That was always alien to me. I was a largely antisocial girl who liked to curl up in a little corner then travel through time and space via books. If you were of similar inclination, you will find in Francis Spufford a kindred spirit. The memoir ends abruptly, but I didn’t mind, because wherever it halted would have been arbitrary. My childhood reading shaded imperceptibly into my teenage then adult reading, which I have every expectation will continue until I’m dead. For Spufford I imagine it’s similar; I think any true reading memoir will always be incomplete.
July 24, 2012
Not sure what to think about this, and not sure what I expected, only that I didn't get it. To me it wasn't really a book about books, about reading, but just a book about growing up and a nod to how books figured into that -- I thought, when I saw the title, that if I wrote an autobiography I'd have to steal the title, but... I don't know, I think Francis Spufford is talking less about how books formed and shaped him, and more about how he reacted to them, and even more about how people in general might react to them.
I did enjoy reading his reactions to Tolkien, Le Guin and C.S. Lewis, which had some commonalities with my own, but... For me, Narnia was the first step on my way to my current spiritual belief system; Earthsea was my first struggle with my identity. Francis Spufford's memoir seems much more academic, not the 'memoir of reading and childhood' that the blurb and testimonials promise.
There is some fascinating stuff here, of course, but it's not about a person's relationship with books in the fierce, personal way I was expecting. I adored books as a child: my pillowcase was stuffed full of books, I'd sneak out of bed at night to grab just one more book to keep me company, I'd read Asimov under the table when I should have been completing math problems. I wanted to connect with someone over that, in this book, and that's not what this is.
I did enjoy reading his reactions to Tolkien, Le Guin and C.S. Lewis, which had some commonalities with my own, but... For me, Narnia was the first step on my way to my current spiritual belief system; Earthsea was my first struggle with my identity. Francis Spufford's memoir seems much more academic, not the 'memoir of reading and childhood' that the blurb and testimonials promise.
There is some fascinating stuff here, of course, but it's not about a person's relationship with books in the fierce, personal way I was expecting. I adored books as a child: my pillowcase was stuffed full of books, I'd sneak out of bed at night to grab just one more book to keep me company, I'd read Asimov under the table when I should have been completing math problems. I wanted to connect with someone over that, in this book, and that's not what this is.
June 28, 2018
" But I was finding it more and more difficult to find books I enjoyed reading. "
I could not agree more Francis.
Even though I love reading books about books , it took me a while to finish this one .
But I have to admit that some parts were really relatable.
I've been through that phase before where I was uncertain about my reading choices . The jump from books i've read during my teenage years and the ones I'm currently reading was not an easy one , in fact , it scared me and made me question why i was reading in the first place.
As Alan Bennet said “The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – which you had thought special and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours.” .
I could not agree more Francis.
Even though I love reading books about books , it took me a while to finish this one .
But I have to admit that some parts were really relatable.
I've been through that phase before where I was uncertain about my reading choices . The jump from books i've read during my teenage years and the ones I'm currently reading was not an easy one , in fact , it scared me and made me question why i was reading in the first place.
As Alan Bennet said “The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – which you had thought special and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours.” .
August 10, 2019
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.
March 4, 2012
I appreciate the effort Francis Spufford made into to describe all the psychological reasons behind reading anything from picture books to porn literature. He analysed his reading from the moment he learnt to read until his late teenage years.
It was an interesting perspective, though I think sometimes a bit far fetched. I wish there was more memoir in this memoir and less of showing off Spufford's erudition. Even though it was interesting most of the time, I felt like it was random and going nowhere too often.
But I throw in a star for the fact the author lives (or used to live when the book was published) in Camberwell. Camberwell, London seems to be the home of quite a few almost decent writers.
It was an interesting perspective, though I think sometimes a bit far fetched. I wish there was more memoir in this memoir and less of showing off Spufford's erudition. Even though it was interesting most of the time, I felt like it was random and going nowhere too often.
But I throw in a star for the fact the author lives (or used to live when the book was published) in Camberwell. Camberwell, London seems to be the home of quite a few almost decent writers.
May 26, 2018
I think The Child That Books Built lives up to its reputation; it is readable, evocative, funny in places and extremely insightful about the activity of reading itself and the effects it may have.
This is more than a memoir of childhood reading. Spufford does tell us about how he learned to read and became an obsessive bookworm, but there is also a lot of erudite and very interesting stuff about developmental psychology, philosophy and so on and the light they may (or sometimes may not) shed on children and reading. I found the whole thing fascinating and engrossing, and the prose is beautiful.
I think anyone who enjoys reading and can remember (or wants to be reminded) of the pleasures of being read to and then learning to read with the wonderful worlds which opened up for us would enjoy this book. Very warmly recommended.
This is more than a memoir of childhood reading. Spufford does tell us about how he learned to read and became an obsessive bookworm, but there is also a lot of erudite and very interesting stuff about developmental psychology, philosophy and so on and the light they may (or sometimes may not) shed on children and reading. I found the whole thing fascinating and engrossing, and the prose is beautiful.
I think anyone who enjoys reading and can remember (or wants to be reminded) of the pleasures of being read to and then learning to read with the wonderful worlds which opened up for us would enjoy this book. Very warmly recommended.
July 7, 2019
I may have never been a young boy, but this book described much of my early life (at least book-wise) perfectly. I went through the whole book, page after page, going "I read that", "I liked that", "I loved that" ....
December 24, 2013
A disastrously-disappointing book, made more so by the fact that I bought the book in response to recommendations I'd gotten. There's over 20 dollars down the drain, and a new book on its way to the landfill, which is something I NEVER do. I found no other proper response than to treat the book as it is: trash.
I suppose the main reason I was so thoroughly repulsed is that it took something of inestimable value to me and represented it as ultimately devoid of any meaning. Since a year before kindergarten, I have vacuumed up books without stopping. In reading I have found wonder, adventure, fun, touching emotion, and deep meaning. I have sought out the works of great authors not just for their genius in crafting story, but their profound insights into the human condition and human issues. I have stockpiled mountains of wonder, feeling, and wisdom. Books have taught me to THINK. How can you get much better than that?
This book was represented to me as the deep musings of a kindred spirit, a pondering of why books had the ability to weave such magical spells and pull us into an interior universe. The book began that way. Although a bit ponderous in its musings on child psychology theory, I thought that we were well on our way to something great.
As it turns out, I ought to have paid more attention to psychology early on: Spufford's own. By the time I got a bit more than halfway through the book, I realized that he and I were nothing alike in our reasons for diving headlong into book after book. For him, it was pure escapism from family realities that he could not face. He candidly describes how his sister's disease required all the attention and resources his parents could give. The author felt his reality shattered by this, and turned to books first to escape, and then to vent his childish and selfish rage. While I cannot judge a person whose shoes I haven't occupied, I was repulsed by his crassness, insensitivity, phobia, and near hatred of disabled people--by his own admission!
So whereas I find in reading wonder and wisdom, the author turned to books only to vent his insecurity, rage and lust. At the end of a childhood voyage through such luminaries as C.S. Lewis, Tolkien, and Ursula LeGuin, we find that as a young man verging on adulthood that he has reached the grand vistas of...erotica. Porn! Since he apparently didn't have the spine to live a real life himself, he chose to spew his undisciplined drives into fantasy women that he could dehumanize in his mind as much as he wished. From the wonders of Narnia and Middle-Earth, with magic and deep meaning, he ends up with....nothing. Emptiness. Sheer instinctual drive reduction. How disgusting, and what a waste of a good mind and potential.
The book ends abruptly, as the author says, (paraphrased) "So then my sister died, and I went off to university. The details from here are none of your business. There. That's my book. The End.". I absolutely could not BELIEVE that this was the payoff toward which I'd labored for over 200 pages. In one fluid motion I closed the cover, walked into the kitchen, and plopped this hardcover waste of my money into the trash.
Do your self a favor. Don't throw away your money on this book. If you borrow it at a library, read the last five or so pages. They will tell you all the takeaway you'll ever get from this book, and you will have conserved precious reading time which you can spend on something worthwhile.
I suppose the main reason I was so thoroughly repulsed is that it took something of inestimable value to me and represented it as ultimately devoid of any meaning. Since a year before kindergarten, I have vacuumed up books without stopping. In reading I have found wonder, adventure, fun, touching emotion, and deep meaning. I have sought out the works of great authors not just for their genius in crafting story, but their profound insights into the human condition and human issues. I have stockpiled mountains of wonder, feeling, and wisdom. Books have taught me to THINK. How can you get much better than that?
This book was represented to me as the deep musings of a kindred spirit, a pondering of why books had the ability to weave such magical spells and pull us into an interior universe. The book began that way. Although a bit ponderous in its musings on child psychology theory, I thought that we were well on our way to something great.
As it turns out, I ought to have paid more attention to psychology early on: Spufford's own. By the time I got a bit more than halfway through the book, I realized that he and I were nothing alike in our reasons for diving headlong into book after book. For him, it was pure escapism from family realities that he could not face. He candidly describes how his sister's disease required all the attention and resources his parents could give. The author felt his reality shattered by this, and turned to books first to escape, and then to vent his childish and selfish rage. While I cannot judge a person whose shoes I haven't occupied, I was repulsed by his crassness, insensitivity, phobia, and near hatred of disabled people--by his own admission!
So whereas I find in reading wonder and wisdom, the author turned to books only to vent his insecurity, rage and lust. At the end of a childhood voyage through such luminaries as C.S. Lewis, Tolkien, and Ursula LeGuin, we find that as a young man verging on adulthood that he has reached the grand vistas of...erotica. Porn! Since he apparently didn't have the spine to live a real life himself, he chose to spew his undisciplined drives into fantasy women that he could dehumanize in his mind as much as he wished. From the wonders of Narnia and Middle-Earth, with magic and deep meaning, he ends up with....nothing. Emptiness. Sheer instinctual drive reduction. How disgusting, and what a waste of a good mind and potential.
The book ends abruptly, as the author says, (paraphrased) "So then my sister died, and I went off to university. The details from here are none of your business. There. That's my book. The End.". I absolutely could not BELIEVE that this was the payoff toward which I'd labored for over 200 pages. In one fluid motion I closed the cover, walked into the kitchen, and plopped this hardcover waste of my money into the trash.
Do your self a favor. Don't throw away your money on this book. If you borrow it at a library, read the last five or so pages. They will tell you all the takeaway you'll ever get from this book, and you will have conserved precious reading time which you can spend on something worthwhile.
January 26, 2016
I have been into a "books on books" kick lately and had been recommended this book rather highly. I am a reader that will usually give a mediocre book/author I've never read before three books before I give up entirely on them. I don't think I made it half-way through this book. Not only was I disgusted with the author and his views on his own family. But was shocked at how bluntly his stated mentally and physically challenged people scared and revolted him, especially his own younger sibling, using that as his excuse for becoming a book-o-holic. But I was somewhat insulted that a book lover of his magnitude would help to describe this beautiful imaginary process in such addict-withdrawal like terms. The only reason I'm giving this book two stars instead of one, is cause the first chapter and scattered statements in later ones were somewhat unique and basely insightful nature touching upon childhood development, which was interesting but lacked a connection to his past topics.
August 8, 2011
This book started off really well, digging deeply into early children's fiction and the effect it had on the writer. I would say it was good up until his teenage years, where he became crass and self indulgent, flowing off on to different and boring tangents.
August 6, 2024
I read this book in 2003, the year after it was first published.
While I read some of the same books as Francis Spufford, my real interest in this book was in discovering someone else for whom reading was such an important part of growing up.
Reading can be such a solitary pursuit, especially where it is an escape route, that why we read what we read is sometimes not much discussed. The adult level analysis that Francis Spufford applies to his childhood reading will appeal to some more than others. I enjoyed it because I like the idea of revisiting some of the journeys of childhood and trying to identify some of the influences on the adult I now am.
I bought this book in hardcover because I know it is a book I want to keep, to refer back to, and perhaps to share.
Highly recommended to all who read.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
While I read some of the same books as Francis Spufford, my real interest in this book was in discovering someone else for whom reading was such an important part of growing up.
Reading can be such a solitary pursuit, especially where it is an escape route, that why we read what we read is sometimes not much discussed. The adult level analysis that Francis Spufford applies to his childhood reading will appeal to some more than others. I enjoyed it because I like the idea of revisiting some of the journeys of childhood and trying to identify some of the influences on the adult I now am.
I bought this book in hardcover because I know it is a book I want to keep, to refer back to, and perhaps to share.
Highly recommended to all who read.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
May 10, 2025
This one was a struggle to finish - I feel like it had a lot of promise, an interesting concept of essentially an autobiography through books and a beautiful writing style. But I ended up not particularly interested and there are some really weird bits - including the ending that within a few sentences goes from discussing porn to the death of his sister. Bit odd overall and a bit disappointing
June 26, 2020
Patches of brilliance scattered throughout mires of slog. I wish it was better.
February 19, 2009
I found parts of this book easy to read and others impossibly hard. I liked best the middle chapters when Spufford wrote in detail about his first book loves. In the chapter entitled "The Island" he writes about the Narnia books and describes beautifully his feeling of betrayal when Narnia is destroyed in the final book. In "The Town" he describes a visit to an Independence Day celebration of the "Little House" books and shows how Rose Wilder's libertarian views may have colored The Long Winter. Those parts really worked for me. The beginning and end, though, were over-analytical and too wordy; I felt like I was wading through them and constantly nodding off. (Of course, maybe I was just up too late).
January 20, 2018
I am sorry to say I was highly dissapointed in this book. While I liked particular stories from the author, as a whole I did not enjoy it very much. I feel as though his constant over-use of rhetoric really caused me to dislike the writing. I had high expectations for this book based on the synopsis and certain reviews I had read, but it ended up being quite a dissapointment. I would not reccomend this book. 2/5 stars.
December 3, 2018
DNF at 64 pages.
backburner
August 27, 2008I would really like to read this sometime too Wanda...going to see if our library has it!
November 24, 2021
I really wanted to like this book, which was a book about books, but when I read it it was a bit like a stream of consciousness that felt too esoteric to follow at times, but I enjoyed its broader themes like the mythology of getting lost in a forest. The latter essays on science fiction were weak in my opinion, but this was a nice in-between book before biting into something more impactful and meaty.
I associate each book with a strong reading memory, and for this book it was quietly slipping out of a ski chalet at 2pm to avoid drinking games and walking into a nearby cafe for coffee to read by myself and listen to All Too Well. 10 minutes in, the door opens and what do you know — my friends from another ski chalet walk in and crash my party of one. I was glad to see them, and inwardly even more glad for them to catch me in such a position, which I had hoped was one of independence of dignity. We moved to a longer table, chatted, I went back to their chalet which was way nicer than the one I’d been housed in, and fell asleep on their couch while they played Catan. When I woke up I had a slice of pecan pie, and the first snow of the season fell down on Vermont. As we drove to another ski chalet, I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas came on the radio, a very apt tune. This memory in Killington will forever be associated with this book.
Quotes:
I have not ceased to be amazed at the invisibility I depend on. Other people can’t see what so permeates time, I accept that, but why can’t they? The imbalance between what’s felt and what shows means I carry the sensory load of fiction like a secret.
I enjoy the power of being different behind my unbetraying face.
The books you read as a child brought you sights you hadn’t seen yourself, scents you hadn’t smelled, sounds you hadn’t heard. They introduced you to people you hadn’t met, and helped you to sample ways of being that would never have occured to you. And the result was, if not an ‘intellectual and rational being’, then somebody who was enriched by the knowledge that their own particular life only occupied one little space in a much bigger world of possibilities.
If the first is where we go when we ‘lose the framework which gave structure to our past life’, we can go there at any age. Any time can be the time when structure collapses and the tangle of roots and branches surrounds us. The order we are living by ends without warning or after long struggle.
There’s also a batch of stories in which the ego-portraying youngest child is a twerp, a simpleton, and yet conquers all by his foolishness, protected by the structure of the story in the same way that, as Bismarck joked, God protects ‘children, drunkards, and the United States of America’.
Library visits have been a ritual in well-regulated childhoods.
Ray Bradbury’s raptured evocation of the contrast between the tame apparatus of the library on one hand — with its benevolent ladies presiding and the quintessence of order in the metallic ker-chunk of the date stamper — and the wilds it contained.
You might be tempted by the idea that the sin would bring you a full, overflowing pleasure, but when you actually succumbed, you’d find out that all you got was a flat, empty sensation. The apples of Sodom taste of ashes.
Americans often imagine that certain freedoms are uniquely their own, when in fact they are common to the citizens of every democracy. But America is unique in its emphasis on liberty, not as the means to some further end like social justice, but as the final and ultimate end in itself, the completion of everything that politics can do for the individual.
American life has compiled its own set of unique types, who inspire fictions as moulded to their protagonists’ social qualities. Boston Brahmins; Gilded Age robber barons; Texas oilmen; film stars; the buzz-cut intelligentsia of national security; advertising men who commute from Connecticut, drink martinis, and have mid-life crises; software geeks; Gen-X slackers. Social forms are constantly renewed.
The picture that characteristically emerges from American storytelling is one of people making deliberate experiments with their destinies.
For a European traveler to wake up in a Holiday Inn in Middle America […] to realise that he is in a place devoted to the frank, literal satisfaction of ordinary desires. America’s array of stuff is no guarantee of happiness, just an incitement to try for it: that’s what makes it exciting.
The author could pack any ordinary thing with malevolence, seize any aspect of the dahlia world and crack it open to show the monstrosity delight.
[In response to feminist criticism, she tried to purge the patriarchal agenda] by writing deliberately de-centred books. The result was probably the weakest period in her career since her early apprenticeship.
Remember how unbearable the adults you knew best had become, just then? How repetitive and mechanical and maddening they seemed, stuck in a loop of behavioural tics and unvarying sayings? When the subjectivities of other people jostle you so oppressively, it’s hard to accept that what you see is what you’re going to get.
Books are a mass medium, but there is no way for readers to be aware of one another. The lines of attention run from reader to book, never laterally from reader to reader. A reader feels alone in a book, but is actually one of a crowd, all occupying the same points in textual space, all making a hubbub that none of them can hear.
I associate each book with a strong reading memory, and for this book it was quietly slipping out of a ski chalet at 2pm to avoid drinking games and walking into a nearby cafe for coffee to read by myself and listen to All Too Well. 10 minutes in, the door opens and what do you know — my friends from another ski chalet walk in and crash my party of one. I was glad to see them, and inwardly even more glad for them to catch me in such a position, which I had hoped was one of independence of dignity. We moved to a longer table, chatted, I went back to their chalet which was way nicer than the one I’d been housed in, and fell asleep on their couch while they played Catan. When I woke up I had a slice of pecan pie, and the first snow of the season fell down on Vermont. As we drove to another ski chalet, I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas came on the radio, a very apt tune. This memory in Killington will forever be associated with this book.
Quotes:
I have not ceased to be amazed at the invisibility I depend on. Other people can’t see what so permeates time, I accept that, but why can’t they? The imbalance between what’s felt and what shows means I carry the sensory load of fiction like a secret.
I enjoy the power of being different behind my unbetraying face.
The books you read as a child brought you sights you hadn’t seen yourself, scents you hadn’t smelled, sounds you hadn’t heard. They introduced you to people you hadn’t met, and helped you to sample ways of being that would never have occured to you. And the result was, if not an ‘intellectual and rational being’, then somebody who was enriched by the knowledge that their own particular life only occupied one little space in a much bigger world of possibilities.
If the first is where we go when we ‘lose the framework which gave structure to our past life’, we can go there at any age. Any time can be the time when structure collapses and the tangle of roots and branches surrounds us. The order we are living by ends without warning or after long struggle.
There’s also a batch of stories in which the ego-portraying youngest child is a twerp, a simpleton, and yet conquers all by his foolishness, protected by the structure of the story in the same way that, as Bismarck joked, God protects ‘children, drunkards, and the United States of America’.
Library visits have been a ritual in well-regulated childhoods.
Ray Bradbury’s raptured evocation of the contrast between the tame apparatus of the library on one hand — with its benevolent ladies presiding and the quintessence of order in the metallic ker-chunk of the date stamper — and the wilds it contained.
You might be tempted by the idea that the sin would bring you a full, overflowing pleasure, but when you actually succumbed, you’d find out that all you got was a flat, empty sensation. The apples of Sodom taste of ashes.
Americans often imagine that certain freedoms are uniquely their own, when in fact they are common to the citizens of every democracy. But America is unique in its emphasis on liberty, not as the means to some further end like social justice, but as the final and ultimate end in itself, the completion of everything that politics can do for the individual.
American life has compiled its own set of unique types, who inspire fictions as moulded to their protagonists’ social qualities. Boston Brahmins; Gilded Age robber barons; Texas oilmen; film stars; the buzz-cut intelligentsia of national security; advertising men who commute from Connecticut, drink martinis, and have mid-life crises; software geeks; Gen-X slackers. Social forms are constantly renewed.
The picture that characteristically emerges from American storytelling is one of people making deliberate experiments with their destinies.
For a European traveler to wake up in a Holiday Inn in Middle America […] to realise that he is in a place devoted to the frank, literal satisfaction of ordinary desires. America’s array of stuff is no guarantee of happiness, just an incitement to try for it: that’s what makes it exciting.
The author could pack any ordinary thing with malevolence, seize any aspect of the dahlia world and crack it open to show the monstrosity delight.
[In response to feminist criticism, she tried to purge the patriarchal agenda] by writing deliberately de-centred books. The result was probably the weakest period in her career since her early apprenticeship.
Remember how unbearable the adults you knew best had become, just then? How repetitive and mechanical and maddening they seemed, stuck in a loop of behavioural tics and unvarying sayings? When the subjectivities of other people jostle you so oppressively, it’s hard to accept that what you see is what you’re going to get.
Books are a mass medium, but there is no way for readers to be aware of one another. The lines of attention run from reader to book, never laterally from reader to reader. A reader feels alone in a book, but is actually one of a crowd, all occupying the same points in textual space, all making a hubbub that none of them can hear.
May 6, 2018
I have no idea where this came from, but it's been on my shelf for ages and I finally got around to digging in. I tried so hard to continue with this, as the premise sounds right up my alley. However, I couldn't make it. Chapter 1 felt like someone trying really hard to craft beautiful prose, unconcerned with building a narrative or making any sense. I was so confused and had no idea what this man was trying to express. I also found his expressions about his sister distasteful.
After deciding I didn't like the author as a person and not being able to figure out what he was trying to tell me about his love for reading (maybe he entered the forest and never came out?), I decided to save myself the wasted hours of plowing through the rest of this. Hopefully, I will find something more enjoyable to read with those precious moments.
After deciding I didn't like the author as a person and not being able to figure out what he was trying to tell me about his love for reading (maybe he entered the forest and never came out?), I decided to save myself the wasted hours of plowing through the rest of this. Hopefully, I will find something more enjoyable to read with those precious moments.
December 9, 2020
Wonderful. I’ve had this book on my shelf for some years, but very soon after I started reading I bought myself the kindle version, as this is definitely one I will want to revisit in years to come. I loved the way the reflections on reading were woven with insights about human development. I loved all the inner reflection in dialogue with the literatures of each age. I found so many paragraphs I could relate to, and which gave me pause in their stark self honesty. I was quite rapt! I emerged feeling a little more self aware. And a little more politically aware in relation to some of my unquestioningly loved childhood stories.
August 16, 2025
A powerful narrative on the way reading forms a life, enables escapism, offers consolation, validates our emotions, provides solace during difficulty and shapes the way we think. Spufford groups his reading into broader metaphors and stages of his life (Island, Forest, Hole) that makes for compelling reading. The first chapter (Confessions of a fiction eater) is an absolute masterpiece and nothing like I’ve ever read before.
However, there is a lot more reflection-on-reading than actual memoir, which is a shame, given how interesting he is as a person, but there is endless amounts of books he mentions that I have never even heard of. Worth reading simply for that. Lots to add to the want to read list.
However, there is a lot more reflection-on-reading than actual memoir, which is a shame, given how interesting he is as a person, but there is endless amounts of books he mentions that I have never even heard of. Worth reading simply for that. Lots to add to the want to read list.
May 1, 2022
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.
February 4, 2015
A first hand, first class description of what it is to be a child addicted to reading. Yes, I do agree with Mr Spufford that the 1960s & 1970s did see a veritable explosion of excellent and imaginative writing for children: a Golden Age by comparison to the last thirty years. I very largely agree with his perspicacious analysis from answering questions which had not previously occurred to me (I’m uncomplicated. I just enjoy a story at the level of the story!). It’s also always pleasant to read a book and feel that the author really enjoyed writing it.
He also made me think.
“But at four I was only a hearer of stories. It isn’t until we’re reading stories privately, on our own account, that the story’s full seducing power can be felt.”
(pg. 62).
‘Yes’, I thought. Then a pause, followed by ‘Oh hh H’. For at that point the awful thought occurred to me as to just what the generations of children who have been, and who are being, brought up on DVDs instead of books, have missed or are missing. Those DVD generations will not only risk growing up with a poorer grasp of language and expression, but also risk deficiencies of imagination. One has exercise tenacity in learning to read, and to practice the skill assiduously. By comparison, watching on a screen can require no (or very little) engagement with the brain whatsoever.
I bought this book second hand. I bought it largely because it was published by a publisher I have grown to trust (Faber & Faber), and because the price asked seemed reasonable. I haven’t been disappointed on either count; though I did spare a moment to bewail the passing of so many excellent, independent publishers, now swallowed up into big corporations. The wood is getting smaller.
He also made me think.
“But at four I was only a hearer of stories. It isn’t until we’re reading stories privately, on our own account, that the story’s full seducing power can be felt.”
(pg. 62).
‘Yes’, I thought. Then a pause, followed by ‘Oh hh H’. For at that point the awful thought occurred to me as to just what the generations of children who have been, and who are being, brought up on DVDs instead of books, have missed or are missing. Those DVD generations will not only risk growing up with a poorer grasp of language and expression, but also risk deficiencies of imagination. One has exercise tenacity in learning to read, and to practice the skill assiduously. By comparison, watching on a screen can require no (or very little) engagement with the brain whatsoever.
I bought this book second hand. I bought it largely because it was published by a publisher I have grown to trust (Faber & Faber), and because the price asked seemed reasonable. I haven’t been disappointed on either count; though I did spare a moment to bewail the passing of so many excellent, independent publishers, now swallowed up into big corporations. The wood is getting smaller.
December 27, 2016
I read this as part of my research into my extended essay for the Children's Literature module I took last term- and I'm not sure why this book isn't compulsory reading for all lifelong bookworms once they hit their 20s. A book that is autobiographical as well as semi-theoretical and psychological in its exploration of childhood reading and the way we interact with texts as children and young adults this book is mind bendingly a collective biography of all bookworms who were once voracious childhood readers.
Some of the book is pleasantly familiar and reassuring- the childhood bedtime reading, trips to the library and the child's sense of wonder at the world of books. Many of the books were familiar to me and the feelings recorded also resonant. But most striking were the parallels in specificity that I found with my own experiences, things I thought that were unique to me, feelings that flooded through me like being struck by lightning- are all recorded in this book that is a testament and love-song to the books we read in our formative years, that make us the people we have become, and are still becoming. It’s an interesting idea and one I’d love to think about more carefully, the books that built me. What group of books, ten, or twenty, or twenty-five would I choose that really built me from birth to now at 22.
What books built you?
Some of the book is pleasantly familiar and reassuring- the childhood bedtime reading, trips to the library and the child's sense of wonder at the world of books. Many of the books were familiar to me and the feelings recorded also resonant. But most striking were the parallels in specificity that I found with my own experiences, things I thought that were unique to me, feelings that flooded through me like being struck by lightning- are all recorded in this book that is a testament and love-song to the books we read in our formative years, that make us the people we have become, and are still becoming. It’s an interesting idea and one I’d love to think about more carefully, the books that built me. What group of books, ten, or twenty, or twenty-five would I choose that really built me from birth to now at 22.
What books built you?
August 30, 2022
An interesting exploration of the power of reading and books for Spufford as a child and teenager. Not really a memoir as such as it is described on the back cover, Spufford details the impact his sisters devastating condition has on himself and his family culminating in her untimely death. The moving final paragraphs detail how Spuffiord found that it was those very same books which helped him to process and cope with her death.
My main struggle with the book was that Spufford's journey through literature was somewhat different from my own and I found myself skipping over the paragraphs about those books outside my own experience. I did particularly enjoy the chapter on Science Fiction which did more mirror my own teenage exploration of SF although I preferred and continue to enjoy the works of authors such as Ray Bradbury who merged fantasy with Science fiction and whose works explore lost childhood as a central theme. A worthwhile read and Spufford makes many interesting observations for example about the importance of finding the right book for the right moment in time and how dyslexia is pretty much exclusively linked to languages with a written alphabet rather than those with pictorial representations.
My main struggle with the book was that Spufford's journey through literature was somewhat different from my own and I found myself skipping over the paragraphs about those books outside my own experience. I did particularly enjoy the chapter on Science Fiction which did more mirror my own teenage exploration of SF although I preferred and continue to enjoy the works of authors such as Ray Bradbury who merged fantasy with Science fiction and whose works explore lost childhood as a central theme. A worthwhile read and Spufford makes many interesting observations for example about the importance of finding the right book for the right moment in time and how dyslexia is pretty much exclusively linked to languages with a written alphabet rather than those with pictorial representations.
April 13, 2008
This book was quoted often in the little blurbs before each chapter in Inkheart and Inkspell; it made me want to read the book. The author looks back at his history with reading and books and how they affected him through his life. He is WORDY (and the bigger the words, the better), deeply and DETAILEDLY analytical and awfully hard to get through at times (I wanted to bundle up some of his big words and beat him with them!) yet I still kept reading (except towards the end when he gets into "adult" reading; i.e., porn). Reading about how the Little House books affected an English boy (and his imaginings of a town--so different from being in America!) was interesting. He also got into the exact bits of how a child learns to read which led to how a child who gained words through reading tends to be an adult who has a few words that he/she is SURE that the rest of the world mis-pronounces; that made me laugh because I have a daughter who does just that!
February 18, 2012
Not at all what I expected (what that was, I can hardly say now, having read it). A sort of memoir; a cogitation of books and reading and language; a study of philosophy; a look at the books or writers--or both--that the author loved and read at various stages of his reading life as a child... All these things, and more, written in lovely prose with deep-thought invoking ideas. One of the pleasures is comparing what books he read to those I read, how he reacted to them, and how he built the worlds in his mind. He preferred Narnia to The Hobbit/LOTR; he saw Maycomb in To Kill a Mockingbird in terms of his own English towns...I never saw E Nesbitt's England as Denver; I never imagined Maycomb as Denver, either... I hated Narnia. But we both missed the political bent behind Laura Ingalls Wilder's books (thank heavens), and we both read and read and read and never got enough. And he's a better writer than I am, and a deeper thinker. A lovely book.
February 12, 2016
DNF - I gave up on this, as it was unreadable to the extent that I got no pleasure from it. Though it an interesting idea to write about how the books a person reads might affect them, and though it started off interestingly with some good psychological observations about fairy stories, it rapidly became difficult to follow. The author seemed to consider a writing style of listing reference after reference to various passages of various children's books (seemingly with little relevance) with little explanation of why, and no attempt to draw together these self-indulgent reminisces to have any meaning. Even though I had read and enjoyed many of the novels he referred to, the style of writing - being similar in structure to scientific journal articles, not books (even scholarly non-fiction) - just did not work for me as the reader. A shame - as the subject, handled differently, would have been a great one.
May 23, 2014
I'm a sucker for Spufford's metaphor-tastic conceit, equating the different phases of his childhood reading to landscapes, but the book rather faceplants in the last section, which has none of the focus and depth of the previous parts. The Forest, The Island, The Town, The Hole. I'm not sure if he's being too coy or not coy enough? I would have liked it more if he'd just called it The Orgy - a hole implies depth and cthonic darkness to me, not fumbling adolescence. Or maybe I'm just too much a girl, and the age of teenaged-boy sweaty sci-fi fantasies fails to resonate?
I did scribble a list of semi-forgotten juvenile-lit authors to check out, and there's some nice stuff on Narnia here. Further up and further in! (That's what she said.)
I did scribble a list of semi-forgotten juvenile-lit authors to check out, and there's some nice stuff on Narnia here. Further up and further in! (That's what she said.)
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