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No One Round Here Reads Tolstoy: Memoirs of a Working-Class Reader
Mark Hodkinson grew up among the terrace houses of Rochdale in a house with just one book. Today, Mark is an author, journalist and publisher. He still lives in Rochdale but is now surrounded by 3,500 titles - at the last count.
No One Round Here Reads Tolstoy is his story of growing up a working-class lad during the 1970s and 1980s. It's about the schools, the music, the people - but pre-eminently and profoundly the books and authors that led the way and shaped his life. It's about a family who didn't see the point of reading, and a troubled grandad who taught Mark the power of stories. It's also a story of how writing and reading has changed over the last five decades.
No One Round Here Reads Tolstoy is his story of growing up a working-class lad during the 1970s and 1980s. It's about the schools, the music, the people - but pre-eminently and profoundly the books and authors that led the way and shaped his life. It's about a family who didn't see the point of reading, and a troubled grandad who taught Mark the power of stories. It's also a story of how writing and reading has changed over the last five decades.
368 pages, Paperback
First published February 3, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 135 reviews
March 20, 2022
I was drawn to this book by the title and cover, being myself a working-class reader. Admittedly, I am from London, rather than the North, and female, rather than male, but the time period that the author grew up in is the same as mine and much of this felt familiar. Also, while as a bookish girl I was often derided or treated with suspicion, the author also struggled with those who saw it as a less manly passtime and, like me, he was told to get out more or informed reading so much would leave him needing glasses...
The book begins with the author moving home and realising he has more books than he could read in his lifetime. Apparently, there is an acronym for this - BABLE, or 'Book Accumulation Beyond Life Expectancy.' This is something I suspect many of us suffer from and I am not sure that I want to find a cure. The very act of buying books, of being surrounded by books, gives me comfort.
Hodkinson himself was always a collector and grew up in a house devoid of books. His father had only one title, "Folklore, Myths and Legends of Britain," which was to be treated carefully. TV was endless, while his interest in reading was viewed with distrust by those around him. The author discusses his life, including his education and various obsessions which mirrored my own - including football and music. Like Mr Hodkinson I gave up bookshops for a while when my children were little (pushchairs are difficult to manoeuvre past small tables, with teetering piles of books which can be easily grabbed) and I agree with the author whole-heartedly that libraries 'were best when they were libraries.'
The author's journey takes him through his time in local journalism, his adventures in publishing and his thoughts on various authors and bands. Alongside his own story is that of his grandfather, who struggled with mental illness after a head injury, leaving his grandmother to cope with with his often erratic behaviour. Despite his difficulties, it is obvious that his grandfather was deeply beloved by his family and that he was a kindly and well-liked man. I felt privileged to read his story and adventures.
Overall, this is a memoir which called to me and which I am delighted I read. I could relate to the author's story so much. Like him, I had a somewhat erratic education (a comprehensive school in East London) and, although I went to University, am mostly self-taught. Like him, I discovered authors by stumbling across them in libraries and found other worlds and points of views. 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. I may not have time to read all the books I own, but I am glad they are there and hope to get to as many as possible.
The book begins with the author moving home and realising he has more books than he could read in his lifetime. Apparently, there is an acronym for this - BABLE, or 'Book Accumulation Beyond Life Expectancy.' This is something I suspect many of us suffer from and I am not sure that I want to find a cure. The very act of buying books, of being surrounded by books, gives me comfort.
Hodkinson himself was always a collector and grew up in a house devoid of books. His father had only one title, "Folklore, Myths and Legends of Britain," which was to be treated carefully. TV was endless, while his interest in reading was viewed with distrust by those around him. The author discusses his life, including his education and various obsessions which mirrored my own - including football and music. Like Mr Hodkinson I gave up bookshops for a while when my children were little (pushchairs are difficult to manoeuvre past small tables, with teetering piles of books which can be easily grabbed) and I agree with the author whole-heartedly that libraries 'were best when they were libraries.'
The author's journey takes him through his time in local journalism, his adventures in publishing and his thoughts on various authors and bands. Alongside his own story is that of his grandfather, who struggled with mental illness after a head injury, leaving his grandmother to cope with with his often erratic behaviour. Despite his difficulties, it is obvious that his grandfather was deeply beloved by his family and that he was a kindly and well-liked man. I felt privileged to read his story and adventures.
Overall, this is a memoir which called to me and which I am delighted I read. I could relate to the author's story so much. Like him, I had a somewhat erratic education (a comprehensive school in East London) and, although I went to University, am mostly self-taught. Like him, I discovered authors by stumbling across them in libraries and found other worlds and points of views. 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. I may not have time to read all the books I own, but I am glad they are there and hope to get to as many as possible.
April 10, 2023
This is a tremendous book. A gem. Part autobiography, part confessions of a book addict, part social history, and part recent publishing trends.
I was already a fan of Mark Hodkinson, having loved his novel The Last Mad Surge Of Youth (2009). Off the back of that I bought a few more of his books but have yet to read them. This is something Mark could readily identify with as he now realises he owns more unread books than time left in his life to read them.
No One Round Here Reads Tolstoy (2022) is initially concerned with Mark’s childhood in the mid 1970s. Educated in a brutal comprehensive school where any sign of braininess had to be carefully concealed. No one in his family read books (excepting the one book in the house, Folklore, Myths and Legends of Britain) and so it was a surprise when he became obsessively drawn to books. This is the starting point for a wonderful tale which embraces lots of inspirational and classic books, punk rock, Mark’s career, how he started his own publishing house Ponoma, the books he has written, journalism, and which ends with his musing on 21st century reading and publishing trends.
Mark Hodkinson's publishing company Pomona Books (www.pomonauk.co.uk) has published titles by Simon Armitage, Bob Stanley, Barry Hines, Ian McMillan, Hunter Davies, Ray Gosling, David Gedge, Stuart Murdoch (of Belle and Sebastian) and many more.
5/5
Mark Hodkinson grew up among dark satanic mills in a house with just one book: Folklore, Myths and Legends of Britain. His dad kept it on top of a wardrobe with other items of great worth - wedding photographs and Mark's National Cycling Proficiency certificate. If Mark wanted to read it, he was warned not to crease the pages or slam shut the covers.
Fast forward to today, and Mark still lives in Rochdale snugly ensconced (or is that buried?) in a 'book cave' surrounded by 3,500 titles - at the last count. He is an author, journalist and publisher.
So this is his story of growing up a working-class lad during the 1970s and 1980s. 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. If only coincidentally, it relates how writing and reading has changed, as the Manor House novel gave way to the kitchen sink drama and working-class writers found the spotlight (if only briefly).
Mark also writes movingly about his troubled grandad who, much the same as books, taught him to wander, and wonder.
I was already a fan of Mark Hodkinson, having loved his novel The Last Mad Surge Of Youth (2009). Off the back of that I bought a few more of his books but have yet to read them. This is something Mark could readily identify with as he now realises he owns more unread books than time left in his life to read them.
No One Round Here Reads Tolstoy (2022) is initially concerned with Mark’s childhood in the mid 1970s. Educated in a brutal comprehensive school where any sign of braininess had to be carefully concealed. No one in his family read books (excepting the one book in the house, Folklore, Myths and Legends of Britain) and so it was a surprise when he became obsessively drawn to books. This is the starting point for a wonderful tale which embraces lots of inspirational and classic books, punk rock, Mark’s career, how he started his own publishing house Ponoma, the books he has written, journalism, and which ends with his musing on 21st century reading and publishing trends.
Mark Hodkinson's publishing company Pomona Books (www.pomonauk.co.uk) has published titles by Simon Armitage, Bob Stanley, Barry Hines, Ian McMillan, Hunter Davies, Ray Gosling, David Gedge, Stuart Murdoch (of Belle and Sebastian) and many more.
5/5
Mark Hodkinson grew up among dark satanic mills in a house with just one book: Folklore, Myths and Legends of Britain. His dad kept it on top of a wardrobe with other items of great worth - wedding photographs and Mark's National Cycling Proficiency certificate. If Mark wanted to read it, he was warned not to crease the pages or slam shut the covers.
Fast forward to today, and Mark still lives in Rochdale snugly ensconced (or is that buried?) in a 'book cave' surrounded by 3,500 titles - at the last count. He is an author, journalist and publisher.
So this is his story of growing up a working-class lad during the 1970s and 1980s. 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. If only coincidentally, it relates how writing and reading has changed, as the Manor House novel gave way to the kitchen sink drama and working-class writers found the spotlight (if only briefly).
Mark also writes movingly about his troubled grandad who, much the same as books, taught him to wander, and wonder.
April 19, 2024
Anyone who has ever felt a surge of rage at the kind of person who thinks ‘autodidact’ is an insult will treasure this book and rightly. Without the snobbery of Lucy Mangan’s Bookworm and packing a far wider range, No One Round Here Reads Tolstoy is an instant classic of its kind. Its pages brim with so many scenes from the life of the career bibliophile you may well demand to know who is this guy, how does he know so much about me?
It starts conventionally enough. Dad spent his days working as an electrician and his nights swilling in the pub; Mum gave up her modest job as a sewing machinist after marrying. Pot shire horses far outnumbered books in the house because books were for jessies - real boys spent their time indulging in the three F’s - fighting, fucking and football. They seem a fairly cheerless bunch. They never drank coffee (‘hoity toity’), or cared for much beyond bickering and sitting in front of a blaring telly. Unusually for the time, the couple never kept a Bible in the house, even once it had been repurposed, in the standard English way, as an unread talisman for warding off evil spirits.
A prolonged sickness turned Hodkinson into a reader, which is a subject he muses about at length. The conclusion he reaches is a pragmatic one: without the bed-rest, he wouldn’t have found the time or space to read. His account of the dawning of literacy in a young mind rivals that of Sartre’s Words. Unlike Sartre, however, he claims no exalted status for books or their readers. He probes his own motivations with honesty. Even as an adult with a collection of over 3,500 titles (‘and ever rising’), he wonders whether this is somehow equivalent to the child’s pillow fort, a screen to keep reality at bay.
Not that his tastes are escapist. Far from it. As a working-class Northerner born in the 1960s, he adores the early work of the so-called ‘Angry Young Men’ - Alan Sillitoe, John Braine, Stan Barstow, David Storey, John Osborne - and their insistence that their worlds were worthy of being written about. He is not blind to their faults or to the fact that, in reality, each had precious little in common with the other. This suspicion of literary groupings and other untruths committed in the name of expedience makes him suspicious of the London literary set in general and privileged big-shots like Robert McCrum in particular. This has earned him daggers from some broadsheet reviewers, which is perhaps the surest sign that a fugitive truth remains at large.
One critic, I’ve noticed, describes Hodkinson as an avid but indiscriminate reader, and gives him a black mark for disliking Jane Austen but liking and writing about pop music, particularly The Smiths. This seems to ignore something crucial about the pleasure of reading. It isn’t meant to be ‘directed’ or nailed to an objective, much as the retired professors may wish to tell themselves otherwise. The only guiding principle is the pleasure principle. Reading widely also means reading attentively and it sharpens your critical faculties. Read one work by a favoured author, such as Barry Hines, and you are tempted to put the later work to the test and see if it holds up. Read one author’s entire work, and like an artist following the tensions suggested in his last line, you find new directions. From Sillitoe et al. Hodkinson discovered other works, and he makes a heartfelt case for overlooked titles by female authors of the same era, especially The L-Shaped Room.
After enjoying The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, he discovered American fiction through The Catcher in the Rye, a book he still re-reads with pleasure every year. He deplores the revisionist tendency to dismiss Holden Caulfield as nothing more than an entitled whinger. The novel’s voice, which he intuitively senses took years of painstaking care (as it did), felt like an act of liberation, a vernacular bomb set off over everything dull and false. This perfectly illustrates how a treasured book encourages empathy. It also unlocks doors within our memories. Like the true bibliophile, he has almost perfect recall of where he was and what he was doing when finding literary gold - in Salinger’s case, on a Saturday morning, approaching noon, while drifting through Rochdale town centre, the bookstand outside Boots ‘a rectangular frieze of colour, words, photographs, typefaces, shapes and cartoons.’
Hodkinson sets great store by the physicality of books. The trouble with a Kindle, he opines, is that while you own the book, you don’t physically possess it. This denies you the pleasure of completing a matching set. Own successive generations of Penguin 20th Century Classics, say, lay them on their sides with the spines facing you, and you could almost be looking at geological strata. He knows that a good cover and author’s photograph make a difference to readers, and a vital one. The author’s photos of Raymond Carver served as a model of integrity because they looked how he wrote - the take me or leave me expression, the image of a hard-working uncle back from parking the truck or enjoying a beer with his pals. In contrast, he found the books published by the Virago press uniformly awful, because they usually showed a glum woman looking out a window or, for the sake of variety, a glum woman sitting on a chair looking out of a window. They deterred readers instead of enticing them.
Like many readers who feed their book habit with charity shops, Hodkinson values the mementoes and keepsakes kept in the books he buys, and devotes an entire section to exhibiting these incidental treasures. His copy of Felicia’s Journey contains a pencil drawing of a fireplace, drawn in a neat hand, with measurements included. Orwell’s A Clergyman’s Daughter still has its library sheet showing various date stamps from Richmond College Library - ‘I have no memory of the college but this is indisputable evidence of its existence.’
Oddly for a memoir, we don’t get much about the author’s family, eventual marriage or the birth of his children. I don’t think this is a case of the books crowding out the life, at least not in the semi-humorous, semi-obsessive way that football does in Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch. Rather, it shows a proper respect for privacy. The noted exception to this general rule is the recurring thread about his late grandfather’s mental illness, sewn into each of the chapters, which contains the book’s most powerful passages - and that is to say a lot. He is especially indignant about the closure of England’s public libraries and the conversion of the survivors into unofficial drop-in centres: ‘Surely it matters very much that visitors pick up a book, otherwise what is a library?’
Written off as a failure in his early teens, Hodkinson's teachers declined to put him forward for O-Levels. Not only did he eventually know a measure of academic success, passing his A-Levels and studying journalism at Sheffield, he eventually became a journalist, columnist, and publisher. His admiring yet observant portrait of Simon Armitage - one of the authors he published, now Poet Laureate of Great Britain - displays a shrewd judge of character. He has written a marvellous book. A copy should be in every office, staff room, mess hall and garage. Years from now I hope readers recall with total clarity where they bought it, and what they felt as they read it.
It starts conventionally enough. Dad spent his days working as an electrician and his nights swilling in the pub; Mum gave up her modest job as a sewing machinist after marrying. Pot shire horses far outnumbered books in the house because books were for jessies - real boys spent their time indulging in the three F’s - fighting, fucking and football. They seem a fairly cheerless bunch. They never drank coffee (‘hoity toity’), or cared for much beyond bickering and sitting in front of a blaring telly. Unusually for the time, the couple never kept a Bible in the house, even once it had been repurposed, in the standard English way, as an unread talisman for warding off evil spirits.
A prolonged sickness turned Hodkinson into a reader, which is a subject he muses about at length. The conclusion he reaches is a pragmatic one: without the bed-rest, he wouldn’t have found the time or space to read. His account of the dawning of literacy in a young mind rivals that of Sartre’s Words. Unlike Sartre, however, he claims no exalted status for books or their readers. He probes his own motivations with honesty. Even as an adult with a collection of over 3,500 titles (‘and ever rising’), he wonders whether this is somehow equivalent to the child’s pillow fort, a screen to keep reality at bay.
Not that his tastes are escapist. Far from it. As a working-class Northerner born in the 1960s, he adores the early work of the so-called ‘Angry Young Men’ - Alan Sillitoe, John Braine, Stan Barstow, David Storey, John Osborne - and their insistence that their worlds were worthy of being written about. He is not blind to their faults or to the fact that, in reality, each had precious little in common with the other. This suspicion of literary groupings and other untruths committed in the name of expedience makes him suspicious of the London literary set in general and privileged big-shots like Robert McCrum in particular. This has earned him daggers from some broadsheet reviewers, which is perhaps the surest sign that a fugitive truth remains at large.
One critic, I’ve noticed, describes Hodkinson as an avid but indiscriminate reader, and gives him a black mark for disliking Jane Austen but liking and writing about pop music, particularly The Smiths. This seems to ignore something crucial about the pleasure of reading. It isn’t meant to be ‘directed’ or nailed to an objective, much as the retired professors may wish to tell themselves otherwise. The only guiding principle is the pleasure principle. Reading widely also means reading attentively and it sharpens your critical faculties. Read one work by a favoured author, such as Barry Hines, and you are tempted to put the later work to the test and see if it holds up. Read one author’s entire work, and like an artist following the tensions suggested in his last line, you find new directions. From Sillitoe et al. Hodkinson discovered other works, and he makes a heartfelt case for overlooked titles by female authors of the same era, especially The L-Shaped Room.
After enjoying The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, he discovered American fiction through The Catcher in the Rye, a book he still re-reads with pleasure every year. He deplores the revisionist tendency to dismiss Holden Caulfield as nothing more than an entitled whinger. The novel’s voice, which he intuitively senses took years of painstaking care (as it did), felt like an act of liberation, a vernacular bomb set off over everything dull and false. This perfectly illustrates how a treasured book encourages empathy. It also unlocks doors within our memories. Like the true bibliophile, he has almost perfect recall of where he was and what he was doing when finding literary gold - in Salinger’s case, on a Saturday morning, approaching noon, while drifting through Rochdale town centre, the bookstand outside Boots ‘a rectangular frieze of colour, words, photographs, typefaces, shapes and cartoons.’
Hodkinson sets great store by the physicality of books. The trouble with a Kindle, he opines, is that while you own the book, you don’t physically possess it. This denies you the pleasure of completing a matching set. Own successive generations of Penguin 20th Century Classics, say, lay them on their sides with the spines facing you, and you could almost be looking at geological strata. He knows that a good cover and author’s photograph make a difference to readers, and a vital one. The author’s photos of Raymond Carver served as a model of integrity because they looked how he wrote - the take me or leave me expression, the image of a hard-working uncle back from parking the truck or enjoying a beer with his pals. In contrast, he found the books published by the Virago press uniformly awful, because they usually showed a glum woman looking out a window or, for the sake of variety, a glum woman sitting on a chair looking out of a window. They deterred readers instead of enticing them.
Like many readers who feed their book habit with charity shops, Hodkinson values the mementoes and keepsakes kept in the books he buys, and devotes an entire section to exhibiting these incidental treasures. His copy of Felicia’s Journey contains a pencil drawing of a fireplace, drawn in a neat hand, with measurements included. Orwell’s A Clergyman’s Daughter still has its library sheet showing various date stamps from Richmond College Library - ‘I have no memory of the college but this is indisputable evidence of its existence.’
Oddly for a memoir, we don’t get much about the author’s family, eventual marriage or the birth of his children. I don’t think this is a case of the books crowding out the life, at least not in the semi-humorous, semi-obsessive way that football does in Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch. Rather, it shows a proper respect for privacy. The noted exception to this general rule is the recurring thread about his late grandfather’s mental illness, sewn into each of the chapters, which contains the book’s most powerful passages - and that is to say a lot. He is especially indignant about the closure of England’s public libraries and the conversion of the survivors into unofficial drop-in centres: ‘Surely it matters very much that visitors pick up a book, otherwise what is a library?’
Written off as a failure in his early teens, Hodkinson's teachers declined to put him forward for O-Levels. Not only did he eventually know a measure of academic success, passing his A-Levels and studying journalism at Sheffield, he eventually became a journalist, columnist, and publisher. His admiring yet observant portrait of Simon Armitage - one of the authors he published, now Poet Laureate of Great Britain - displays a shrewd judge of character. He has written a marvellous book. A copy should be in every office, staff room, mess hall and garage. Years from now I hope readers recall with total clarity where they bought it, and what they felt as they read it.
March 10, 2022
Mark Hodkinson is an investigative journalist, an author, a biographer, a publisher, and a musician. All of these feed into No One Round Here Reads Tolstoy and the result is a book that isn't quite sure what it wants to be. To begin with, Hodkinson adopts a familiar format: the books that made me a reader and this is interesting because it subverts the genre's familiar snobbishness. Then the memoir element begins, a running thread that describes Hodkinson's relation to his schizophrenic grandfather. The blurring of reality and illusion echoes northern works such as Billy Liar. Ultimately, however, there are too many elements and the novel-memoir-cultural-history-becomes confused. Part Two sits oddly with Part One. The second section is an essay that takes a swipe at class structures and the notion of being well-read and the difference between a bibliophile and bibliomaniac. I found this to be a bumpy read, fascinating and dull in equal measures.
July 29, 2023
An excellent book that really resounded with a fellow Northern working class bibliophile.
I feel that this book really ran some parallels with my own upbringing, although there are some years between us. Mark's asides about his granddad really resonate with me, as my nan had Alzheimers during most of my early teens and would often escape from home and be found wandering towards her own childhood home. The police brought her back to my bewildered granddad on many occasion, before she had to go into a nursing home. Yet, like Mark's granddad, my nan was great company to me in my youth, full of fantastic stories and sayings (some a bit blue if you know what I mean!)
I too was and still am bookish; shyly burying my head in a fictional world to escape the difficulties of this one, so the musings on a childhood spent in books is literally like word porn to me. I was amassing rather a "collection" of books too, but soon realised that some books I had kept purely for the sake of it, as opposed to them bringing me real joy, hence my recent and ongoing book culling!
All in all, Hodkinson's book is hugely enjoyable to me as I see something of myself in there (albeit swap punk music for dance, and my opinion on libraries differs to Mark's. If community hub is the branding required to keep libraries in existence, then feel free to hub away!!).
A highly enjoyable read and one recommendable, particularly if you're a Northern working class book lover!
I feel that this book really ran some parallels with my own upbringing, although there are some years between us. Mark's asides about his granddad really resonate with me, as my nan had Alzheimers during most of my early teens and would often escape from home and be found wandering towards her own childhood home. The police brought her back to my bewildered granddad on many occasion, before she had to go into a nursing home. Yet, like Mark's granddad, my nan was great company to me in my youth, full of fantastic stories and sayings (some a bit blue if you know what I mean!)
I too was and still am bookish; shyly burying my head in a fictional world to escape the difficulties of this one, so the musings on a childhood spent in books is literally like word porn to me. I was amassing rather a "collection" of books too, but soon realised that some books I had kept purely for the sake of it, as opposed to them bringing me real joy, hence my recent and ongoing book culling!
All in all, Hodkinson's book is hugely enjoyable to me as I see something of myself in there (albeit swap punk music for dance, and my opinion on libraries differs to Mark's. If community hub is the branding required to keep libraries in existence, then feel free to hub away!!).
A highly enjoyable read and one recommendable, particularly if you're a Northern working class book lover!
March 24, 2022
Until he moved house it hadn’t really occurred to him quite how many books that Hodkinson actually owned. Eight boxes of books with around forty per box made 3200. It was actually a little bit more than that, he now knows that he owns 3500 books. He calls it his book cave.
How did he get to that many books though? When he was growing up in Rochdale there was one book in his house, the now rare, Folklore, Myths and Legends of Britain. ( I really want to get a copy of this!!!) It was kept on top of a wardrobe with other items of great worth. He was allowed to read it, but it had to be treated with all due reverence and care.
Growing up a working-class lad during the 1970s and 1980s was for most of his peers a book free experience. e liked the same music as they did, but there was something about the magic of the worlds contained in a book that he fell for completely. He was quite unusual in trying to find books in out of way places and came across a lot of characters as he slowly began to read and acquire books.
He said at a careers interview that he wanted to be a writer, the guy asked if he meant journalist, and he said no writer. He suggested Marks & Spencer needed people and to apply there. He didn’t but did pursue a job in journalism. These were the days before the internet so the local paper was still read widely and could offer a career path, and for Hodkinson, this opened up opportunities where he finally became a writer and a publisher.
It is an interesting story of his life and there were parts of it I really liked. There are parts that made me laugh in here and it brought back memories of my time growing up in the same decades. It is not just about books though, it is about his take on life and is full of the happy and sad memories he still carries with him. All the way through the book he punctuates his life story with snapshots of his grandfather and the life that he had. It adds a sad and melancholy note to the book, but it reminds us that he has not always had the easiest path through life working as a rare northern-based publisher. I am not counting my books either…
How did he get to that many books though? When he was growing up in Rochdale there was one book in his house, the now rare, Folklore, Myths and Legends of Britain. ( I really want to get a copy of this!!!) It was kept on top of a wardrobe with other items of great worth. He was allowed to read it, but it had to be treated with all due reverence and care.
Growing up a working-class lad during the 1970s and 1980s was for most of his peers a book free experience. e liked the same music as they did, but there was something about the magic of the worlds contained in a book that he fell for completely. He was quite unusual in trying to find books in out of way places and came across a lot of characters as he slowly began to read and acquire books.
He said at a careers interview that he wanted to be a writer, the guy asked if he meant journalist, and he said no writer. He suggested Marks & Spencer needed people and to apply there. He didn’t but did pursue a job in journalism. These were the days before the internet so the local paper was still read widely and could offer a career path, and for Hodkinson, this opened up opportunities where he finally became a writer and a publisher.
It is an interesting story of his life and there were parts of it I really liked. There are parts that made me laugh in here and it brought back memories of my time growing up in the same decades. It is not just about books though, it is about his take on life and is full of the happy and sad memories he still carries with him. All the way through the book he punctuates his life story with snapshots of his grandfather and the life that he had. It adds a sad and melancholy note to the book, but it reminds us that he has not always had the easiest path through life working as a rare northern-based publisher. I am not counting my books either…
June 22, 2024
I think my problem with this book is age-related. I loved the part about his childhood and growing up in a family and neighborhood of non-readers. I could identify with that and his love of reading and having too many books. I got very bored with his teen and young adult years because of the punk scene and his music tastes. (That's where my age is showing). The last 3 chapters grabbed my interest again when he mused upon the future of books and reading in an electronic age. All in all, a mixed bag for me.
May 14, 2022
No One Round Here Reads Tolstoy has a lot to offer any book hoarder or bibliophile. I was relieved to realise that my own personal library (now at 900+ titles) is perfectly reasonable… but equally terrified to learn new-to-me terms like BABLE (Book Accumulation Beyond Life Expectancy). This was a thoroughly enjoyable and highly readable overview of another lifelong bibliophile’s development.
My full review of No One Round Here Reads Tolstoy is up now on Keeping Up With The Penguins.
My full review of No One Round Here Reads Tolstoy is up now on Keeping Up With The Penguins.
June 14, 2022
I love a good book about someone who loves books. This particular example functions as part biography, part memoir and part explanation of how a working-class boy from a poor area of northern England came to love books so much. He has three and a half thousand of them in his house. It is amusing, sad, poignant and clever all at the same time. There is also a story woven within the story. Regular short paragraphs in italics about the author’s grandfather, Hodkinson’s memories of the man and his declining mental health. The sadness builds as the book progresses:
Obviously, a book about such a dedicated bibliophile has plenty of references to literature, but when we reach The Catcher in the Rye the praise really starts to sing. From the discovery of a copy in Boots the Chemist, who once were booksellers, to the fact the author still reads the book once a year. ‘Once a year, every year, I read the book and the feeling remains the same; it still smarts with a lust for life.’ Hodkinson would go on commission and edit a biography of J D Salinger. Few of us could tell a similar tale about our childhood obsessions.
I was impressed with the author’s recall of books he read at a young age. As he saw it, music and books were a means to build your personality. At the same time as he was absorbing fiction he was also learning to be a journalist, playing in a band and writing music columns. Despite all these many calls on his time he read furiously, always aware of that goal of wanting to be a writer. Despite writing regular newspaper columns, and then commissioned biographies, it was only the creation of a novel that would allow him to properly call himself a writer.
Being a reader is, in my opinion, an essential part of becoming a writer. As a reader it is always good to hear the thoughts of others about certain books. I have had an unread copy of The Catcher in the Rye on my shelves for years. I was inspired to pick it up having read Hodkinson’s description. His reading often comes with its own backstory, such as this about The Outsider by Albert Camus.
At one point early in the book Hodkinson describes the gulf between him and Virginia Woolf and her plea for a space in A Room of One’s Own. While Woolf lived in a five-storey house with a library overlooking Hyde Park and spent summers in St Ives where she was inspired by the reflection of the shimmering sea on her bedroom ceiling, ‘My parents, by contrast, came from backgrounds where everyone was busy getting by, staying warm, covering the rent, caring for children, putting food on the table. There was no time or space or encouragement or inclination to ponder on authors, artists or anything other than life’s essentials.’
The issue Hodkinson faced from his father was that
Lamenting the gradual death of the newspaper due to the growth of the internet, where every event can be posted onto the fame of Facebook, the author pulls out a great quote from Charles Bukowski – ‘The problem with the world is that intelligent people are full of doubt, while the stupid people are full of confidence.’
As the book progresses we close in on the minutiae of Hodkinson’s book filled life. From his exploits in the publishing world to the arrangement of his house. At one point his lists all the book subjects in the various rooms of his house; front room, living room, kitchen, top of the stairs, landing, bedrooms, office, loft and garage. I am amazed he can keep things so compartmentalised. I have books by the same author in three different shelves in three different rooms. But then again, I have one shelf with all the books by a single author in their order of publication, apart from one oversized volume which doesn’t fit and remains a constant sense of irritation on the shelf above.
The author gradually admits to himself that;
The love of and consequent hoarding of books eventually drives Hodgkinson to seek some answers from Lisa, a psychiatrist. Throughout most of the conversation he feels it was much the same a listening to a conversation with a mate in the Red Lion, but then comes the gold:
At the end of the book are two fascinating appendices. The first provides a little narrative on items that the author has found in books. From dedications to book plates, from notes to photographs pasted inside the covers. I love to find things in old books, and have a special love of boarding passes. The name of a person, a date and a time and a point of departure and arrival. What more could a writer want for the beginning of a story. Sadly, I notice that these passes are often located near the front of a novel, as if abandoned mid-flight, lost to the allure of an in-flight movie and never finished on the subsequent holiday or even the return flight.
The second list is of TBR piles around Hodkinson’s house. Five piles are explored:
Coffee table, front room
Corner table, front room
Toilet
Bedside table
Office/study floor.
I am amazed at the variety, although my own TBRs have multiplied to take in the bedside and now the desk where books to be reviewed will languish. And the floor beside the desk where research books reside. But how much fun to have a front seat into other people’s reading habits. Let me allow Hodkinson to have the last word on his own mania:
I don’t feel so bad about my own collection. Just knowing there are other like me out there is a big help on the road to recovery.
Four and a half stars from me.
Grandad used to scrawl on newspapers, envelopes and scraps of paper left around the house. He had spidery close-together writing and never tired of scribbling his name. It was like a barometer; the letters became more condensed and jagged when trouble was imminent. He’d mumble to himself and become fastidious; counting his money, checking through bills and insurance policies. He moved around the furniture, agitated, twigs cracking in an internal bonfire. He was turned in on himself, as if he’d swallowed a thunderstorm and it was pressing against his skin.
Obviously, a book about such a dedicated bibliophile has plenty of references to literature, but when we reach The Catcher in the Rye the praise really starts to sing. From the discovery of a copy in Boots the Chemist, who once were booksellers, to the fact the author still reads the book once a year. ‘Once a year, every year, I read the book and the feeling remains the same; it still smarts with a lust for life.’ Hodkinson would go on commission and edit a biography of J D Salinger. Few of us could tell a similar tale about our childhood obsessions.
I was impressed with the author’s recall of books he read at a young age. As he saw it, music and books were a means to build your personality. At the same time as he was absorbing fiction he was also learning to be a journalist, playing in a band and writing music columns. Despite all these many calls on his time he read furiously, always aware of that goal of wanting to be a writer. Despite writing regular newspaper columns, and then commissioned biographies, it was only the creation of a novel that would allow him to properly call himself a writer.
Being a reader is, in my opinion, an essential part of becoming a writer. As a reader it is always good to hear the thoughts of others about certain books. I have had an unread copy of The Catcher in the Rye on my shelves for years. I was inspired to pick it up having read Hodkinson’s description. His reading often comes with its own backstory, such as this about The Outsider by Albert Camus.
I can recall days where nothing much happened but, paradoxically, everything happened because I was in a heightened state of awareness through a particular book. Over the course of a freezing day during the Christmas holiday I read The Outsider by Albert Camus. I had a cold. I stayed in my pyjamas all day. I felt like I was living a parallel life: part of me on the sandy streets of Algiers, drinking strong coffee at Celeste’s restaurant; the other slightly feverish in snowed-in Rochdale. Camus wrote exquisitely of the fig trees, the red sky, the old men sitting on chairs outside the tobacconist’s and the trip to a nearby beach where the sea sent ‘long, lazy’ waves across the sand. More than this sense of place, there was a deeper geography at work in the short, sharp sentences and the rhythm of ordinary acts of living expressed until it became hypnotic. I loved this altered state of thinking induced by a book, how it transcended mere story or characters, to become elemental.
At one point early in the book Hodkinson describes the gulf between him and Virginia Woolf and her plea for a space in A Room of One’s Own. While Woolf lived in a five-storey house with a library overlooking Hyde Park and spent summers in St Ives where she was inspired by the reflection of the shimmering sea on her bedroom ceiling, ‘My parents, by contrast, came from backgrounds where everyone was busy getting by, staying warm, covering the rent, caring for children, putting food on the table. There was no time or space or encouragement or inclination to ponder on authors, artists or anything other than life’s essentials.’
The issue Hodkinson faced from his father was that
My dad considered reading and writing to be predominantly a feminine pastime, much the same as, say, sewing or netball...Dad didn’t know any writers or anything about them. The men he knew worked with their hands, fixing cars, building houses or toiling at lathes. They married young. They played sports together, drank together. They didn’t retreat to their bedrooms, choosing solitariness ahead of the street, park or pub.
Lamenting the gradual death of the newspaper due to the growth of the internet, where every event can be posted onto the fame of Facebook, the author pulls out a great quote from Charles Bukowski – ‘The problem with the world is that intelligent people are full of doubt, while the stupid people are full of confidence.’
As the book progresses we close in on the minutiae of Hodkinson’s book filled life. From his exploits in the publishing world to the arrangement of his house. At one point his lists all the book subjects in the various rooms of his house; front room, living room, kitchen, top of the stairs, landing, bedrooms, office, loft and garage. I am amazed he can keep things so compartmentalised. I have books by the same author in three different shelves in three different rooms. But then again, I have one shelf with all the books by a single author in their order of publication, apart from one oversized volume which doesn’t fit and remains a constant sense of irritation on the shelf above.
The author gradually admits to himself that;
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. Life, much as we try to keep it at arm’s length or delude ourselves that it falls under our dominion, often ‘blindsides you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday’. The big stuff – bereavement, divorce, illness, heartbreak, a global pandemic – crashes randomly before us, splat, and reading becomes impossible with a head and heart weighed with pain and worry and regret. And the good stuff can impact our reading, too: a new relationship, an urge to travel, an exciting project or an irresistible call for reinvention of self.
Books don’t mind. They are patient. They await your return.
The love of and consequent hoarding of books eventually drives Hodgkinson to seek some answers from Lisa, a psychiatrist. Throughout most of the conversation he feels it was much the same a listening to a conversation with a mate in the Red Lion, but then comes the gold:
On one hand, by having such a collection and planning to read all these books, you are making a fantastic statement of hope and revealing an investment in future self,’ she said. ‘Even if you recognise you probably won’t have time to read them all, you are already forming a relationship with mortality which we all must do at some point in our lives. The snag is the frustration you say you feel that comes with this relationship. This is something you need to deal with and accept. I sense that some of this dissatisfaction is because, for whatever reason, you have not read as many of these books as you’d have liked and you spend a lot of time projecting yourself into the future: a time and a place where and when you will finally do all the reading that you’ve always wanted to do. I also think that you see books subconsciously as a safety net. Everyone has a primal fear of abandonment and you have suffered this twice in your life. Most people experience this or similar and the pain is such that, in many different ways, they make preparations so that it either doesn’t happen again, and that can go as far as avoiding future relationships altogether, or setting down to themselves a clearly defined coping mechanism. I think, to you, books are metaphorical friends and part of the reason you have so many is that, ever so slightly and in a perfectly normal way, you have lost a little bit of trust in the world.
At the end of the book are two fascinating appendices. The first provides a little narrative on items that the author has found in books. From dedications to book plates, from notes to photographs pasted inside the covers. I love to find things in old books, and have a special love of boarding passes. The name of a person, a date and a time and a point of departure and arrival. What more could a writer want for the beginning of a story. Sadly, I notice that these passes are often located near the front of a novel, as if abandoned mid-flight, lost to the allure of an in-flight movie and never finished on the subsequent holiday or even the return flight.
The second list is of TBR piles around Hodkinson’s house. Five piles are explored:
Coffee table, front room
Corner table, front room
Toilet
Bedside table
Office/study floor.
I am amazed at the variety, although my own TBRs have multiplied to take in the bedside and now the desk where books to be reviewed will languish. And the floor beside the desk where research books reside. But how much fun to have a front seat into other people’s reading habits. Let me allow Hodkinson to have the last word on his own mania:
I have arrived her – 3,500 books – be stealth. It’s easily done if you acquire books on a regular basis, seldom discard any and are lucky enough to live into your mid-fifties….
If, for the sake of simple maths, it is assumed I began amassing the books at the age of thirteen, it means that in the intervening 2,236 weeks I have added, on average, just over 1.5 books to my collection per week; it suddenly doesn’t seem such a remarkable tally. In fact, I am mystified how anyone can go through life and manage not to bring home 1.5 books per week.
I don’t feel so bad about my own collection. Just knowing there are other like me out there is a big help on the road to recovery.
Four and a half stars from me.
February 17, 2022
This was a compelling read. Indeed I found it hard to put down. There are some points of similarity between the author and this reader. Its true that the nearest i've got to Rochdale is listening to the Mike Harding record when I myself was a kid.. (I don't remember the Rochdale Cowboy though I do remember Strangeways hotel)- he references the former in a footnote i'm relieved to say- and that as a namby pamby southerner I Cannot claim to be northern. But I am a reader and self proclaimed bibliophile; have lived as far north as Sheffield and do worry about having too many books.I count myself as working class but despite living on a council estate as a child it was hardly the industrial North in the shire counties.
Whether I have 3500 books is hard to tell. Hodkinson outlines his dilemma with an opening story about a recent house move and the need to transport all those books. This develops into a memoir of his childhood (in the 1970s) and coming of age as a reader and eventually a working journalist. The focus on his life through books is rather piquant as he names books and writers he discovered. Interspersed with this are accounts of family life; his mentally ill grandad and friendships made and lost. 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. His lifes ambition was to be a writer using journalism as a stepping stone. He's good at milieus and townscapes as well as describing the dynamics of working relationships. On balance his life seemed fairly uneventful but the micro accounts of books and that relationship is very well done.
Eventually he achieves his ambition to write books himself. There are excellent sections at the end where he visits analysts to assuage or test his worry that he has too many books and may suffer from a hoarding affliction (bibliomania) rather than just being a bibliophile. Interesting accounts of these meetings are told almost verbatim. The final endnotes are great fun with examples of books he owns with inscriptions and bookplates and descriptions off what the numerous TBR piles contain in his house.
Overall more than a love letter to the physical book ( he discusses kindles); a good account of where we are now with books and how personal that relationship can be. Hodkinson doesn't try to hard to write a consciously literary book. the only fault maybe not enough on the working class aspect. No mention of Richard Hoggart or studies of working class readers though predictably he urges more writers to emerge from working class backgrounds and condemns publishers as being from the elites. He set himself up as a publisher with mixed and interesting results. Overall an honest nuanced and intelligent book which was entertaining and informative and touched a few personal buttons. Recommended to anyone who cherishes books. Its nicely produced as well with an atmospheric cover and bright colours on the endpapers! A thing of beauty indeed. Its a shame the book doesn't contain anymore pictures though- either of the author, his family or the books he loves- but maybe the printed word is the thing and he didn't want the reader just skipping to the pictures and colour plates in the middle!! Reading the text is certainly worth the effort.
May 23, 2022
I liked No One Round Here Reads Tolstoy a lot. Mark Hodkinson writes very engagingly throughout and I found the whole thing very enjoyable.
The book - and its title especially – presents itself as a reading memoir, which to an extent it is, although there is much more here. Hodkinson grew up in an unliterary, and often anti-literary, working class family in Rochdale. From an early age he loved to read, which was viewed with great suspicion by most of his family and friends. The early section on his discovery of the joy of reading and of the books which brought him that joy is excellent. It is honest, straightforward and down-to-earth, and captures the excitement of books and – crucially – the sheer pleasure of time alone with a book without external demands, which chimed closely with my own experience.
Hodkinson manages to discuss books with no element of showing off or of demonstrating how well read he is, which is a relief. 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.
I like Hodkinson’s assessments of many of the books he’s read, too. I don’t agree with all of them, of course – that’s just how it is with books – but he is insightful, thoughtful and independent. He refuses to be cowed by orthodoxy, so when he writes of The Catcher In The Rye (which had a tremendous effect on him when young, as it did on so many of us) he resists the “agenda of cultural revisionism” which deems Holden to be “too male, too white, too privileged, too American, too heterosexual...flagrantly misogynistic…” Hodkinson says, “..social mores drawn predominantly from the 1940sare bound to jar in a modern context; it’s one of the reasons why we read: to understand and interpret the present through the past, how we got here.” Spot on, Mark!
There is a good deal more here, including Hodkinson’s training and career as a journalist, then freelance writer, amateur musician, publisher and editor, with reflections on the state of newspapers, publishing and related matters and a good deal of personal history, most notably the story of his grandfather’s decline into mental illness after a head injury and its effect on the whole family. This is intercut throughout the book and, once I got used to switching in and out of the story, I found it touching and humane.
So, not just a book memoir, but a fine, enjoyable and informative read all round. Warmly recommended.
(My thanks to Canongate for an ARC via NetGalley.)
The book - and its title especially – presents itself as a reading memoir, which to an extent it is, although there is much more here. Hodkinson grew up in an unliterary, and often anti-literary, working class family in Rochdale. From an early age he loved to read, which was viewed with great suspicion by most of his family and friends. The early section on his discovery of the joy of reading and of the books which brought him that joy is excellent. It is honest, straightforward and down-to-earth, and captures the excitement of books and – crucially – the sheer pleasure of time alone with a book without external demands, which chimed closely with my own experience.
Hodkinson manages to discuss books with no element of showing off or of demonstrating how well read he is, which is a relief. 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.
I like Hodkinson’s assessments of many of the books he’s read, too. I don’t agree with all of them, of course – that’s just how it is with books – but he is insightful, thoughtful and independent. He refuses to be cowed by orthodoxy, so when he writes of The Catcher In The Rye (which had a tremendous effect on him when young, as it did on so many of us) he resists the “agenda of cultural revisionism” which deems Holden to be “too male, too white, too privileged, too American, too heterosexual...flagrantly misogynistic…” Hodkinson says, “..social mores drawn predominantly from the 1940sare bound to jar in a modern context; it’s one of the reasons why we read: to understand and interpret the present through the past, how we got here.” Spot on, Mark!
There is a good deal more here, including Hodkinson’s training and career as a journalist, then freelance writer, amateur musician, publisher and editor, with reflections on the state of newspapers, publishing and related matters and a good deal of personal history, most notably the story of his grandfather’s decline into mental illness after a head injury and its effect on the whole family. This is intercut throughout the book and, once I got used to switching in and out of the story, I found it touching and humane.
So, not just a book memoir, but a fine, enjoyable and informative read all round. Warmly recommended.
(My thanks to Canongate for an ARC via NetGalley.)
July 1, 2023
This is one of those books that left me feeling absolutely grateful to have picked it up and read it; so much so, that I want to write a letter of thanks to the author and let him know what a gift it was for me to receive the benefit of his time and effort to produce this work.
How I even came across this book in the first place is a story in and of itself. In late May, I was reading a sports article about the upcoming FA Cup Final between Man City and Man United. The article mentioned how in 1999 a journalist spent a year with Man City—chronicling their season—and then produced a book, which has been regarded as one of the best books in football history. That journalist was a man by the name of Mark Hodkinson (I had never heard of him). As a Man City fan, naturally I wanted to read this book. So I searched my local library, and then looked through the MelCat system which checks for books across the entire state of Michigan. I couldn’t find the book about Man City, but there was another title available from Mark Hodkinson, and the title struck me immediately; “No One Round Here Reads Tolstoy.” I had to read this book. And again, I am SO glad that I did!
Without spoiling it really, I will suffice to say that this book triples as a personal memoir, a kind of history of literature, and also a love song to books and the passion of reading. If you are a person who likes to read and considers yourself “well-read,” I would venture to say this book is for you.
There is so much I could say about this author, the book, how much I enjoyed it, related to it, etc. But I will simply leave it at this… go read it!
How I even came across this book in the first place is a story in and of itself. In late May, I was reading a sports article about the upcoming FA Cup Final between Man City and Man United. The article mentioned how in 1999 a journalist spent a year with Man City—chronicling their season—and then produced a book, which has been regarded as one of the best books in football history. That journalist was a man by the name of Mark Hodkinson (I had never heard of him). As a Man City fan, naturally I wanted to read this book. So I searched my local library, and then looked through the MelCat system which checks for books across the entire state of Michigan. I couldn’t find the book about Man City, but there was another title available from Mark Hodkinson, and the title struck me immediately; “No One Round Here Reads Tolstoy.” I had to read this book. And again, I am SO glad that I did!
Without spoiling it really, I will suffice to say that this book triples as a personal memoir, a kind of history of literature, and also a love song to books and the passion of reading. If you are a person who likes to read and considers yourself “well-read,” I would venture to say this book is for you.
There is so much I could say about this author, the book, how much I enjoyed it, related to it, etc. But I will simply leave it at this… go read it!
May 8, 2024
The best part of this book is the very last 30 pages or so, where Hodkinson describes the items or notes written in the books from his collection.
The rest of the book didn't click with me. All in all, it was hard to follow and engage with the story and its sequence, I tried.
The rest of the book didn't click with me. All in all, it was hard to follow and engage with the story and its sequence, I tried.
April 13, 2022
I tried, I really tried…
I rarely give up on a book. Even a bad book. I struggled to about 60% of the book, and gave up. To be clear… I don’t know the author, but it took no time at all to work out that I grew up poor ( we couldn’t afford the school trips he went on) within walking distance of him. I am four years older. My brother about his age. My sister about five years younger. I went to the same school that he has such a low opinion of.
He seems to want to write the iconic working class novel. Well, he hasn’t. And he doesn’t speak for me or to me. Ploughing through the text is hard going with so much self indulgent whining.
I can’t be bothered giving much more time to this self-centred monologue, so I’ll just say that that “awful school” inspired me - three post-graduate degrees, a life of working with disadvantaged communities, shelves (and a Kindle) full of books (including Tolstoy); and never did it let down either my brother or my sister- or anyone else I knew.
Yes, working class people are often failed by a system designed to keep them in their place. But “the system” can only do so much. Because the world is full of people. And we may be influenced by family, by school, by the system - but we are also who we make ourselves. That was something that I learned from my mother, from teachers at Balderstone Community School, and from life.
I am reminded of the nursery rhyme about the old woman who lived in a shoe…and the joke oft told about how lucky she was to have a shoe to live in. This book constantly left me feeling like I was wading through the joke. Mark tells it like he had a hard life, and this makes his opinions authentic. Yeah, none of us had the advantages that some people were born with. So what? This is possibly A working class life, but it isn’t the sum of working class life. Not even close. You can whinge about how unfair the world is, or you can change it. This book does the former, but nothing for the latter.
I rarely give up on a book. Even a bad book. I struggled to about 60% of the book, and gave up. To be clear… I don’t know the author, but it took no time at all to work out that I grew up poor ( we couldn’t afford the school trips he went on) within walking distance of him. I am four years older. My brother about his age. My sister about five years younger. I went to the same school that he has such a low opinion of.
He seems to want to write the iconic working class novel. Well, he hasn’t. And he doesn’t speak for me or to me. Ploughing through the text is hard going with so much self indulgent whining.
I can’t be bothered giving much more time to this self-centred monologue, so I’ll just say that that “awful school” inspired me - three post-graduate degrees, a life of working with disadvantaged communities, shelves (and a Kindle) full of books (including Tolstoy); and never did it let down either my brother or my sister- or anyone else I knew.
Yes, working class people are often failed by a system designed to keep them in their place. But “the system” can only do so much. Because the world is full of people. And we may be influenced by family, by school, by the system - but we are also who we make ourselves. That was something that I learned from my mother, from teachers at Balderstone Community School, and from life.
I am reminded of the nursery rhyme about the old woman who lived in a shoe…and the joke oft told about how lucky she was to have a shoe to live in. This book constantly left me feeling like I was wading through the joke. Mark tells it like he had a hard life, and this makes his opinions authentic. Yeah, none of us had the advantages that some people were born with. So what? This is possibly A working class life, but it isn’t the sum of working class life. Not even close. You can whinge about how unfair the world is, or you can change it. This book does the former, but nothing for the latter.
January 14, 2023
A recent house move involved 100 boxes of books and so I could relate completely to the opening scene where the author is moving house and friends and family helping with the move ask him why he has so many books and how many he has. This is a tale of the books that shaped the author's teens and twenties interwoven with an elegy to his grandfather who sustained a head-injury in a railway accident and suffered from mental health issues as a result.
I started this on audio and switched to the actual book along the way which I found the better format to manage the switches between the author's life and his memories of his grandfather. I enjoyed the tone and insight this provided into the region where we now also live. And of course added more books to read to my lists!
I started this on audio and switched to the actual book along the way which I found the better format to manage the switches between the author's life and his memories of his grandfather. I enjoyed the tone and insight this provided into the region where we now also live. And of course added more books to read to my lists!
March 21, 2022
No One Round Here Reads Tolstoy is a great book that any lifelong reader will probably relate to. There are loads of similarities with my own story, and inevitably loads of differences too. Mark is roughly the same age as me and, like anyone of our age, our lives are composed of a giant dichotomy separated by the appearance of mass-participation Internet in the middle of it. I can so relate to the isolation of the early years. Mark was perhaps more isolated than me, because of his school and family home, but it's poignant recalling just how hard it was to find out anything and things like discovering great books like Catcher In The Rye more or less by accident just happened from time to time. Younger people just will not get that bit.
The book starts off very much a biography of Mark's reading then suddenly around page 200 football is mentioned. At that point, the books shifts into a slightly different perspective, more about Mark's career and how it intertwines his reading, and his reading drives his career. I lived in Manchester around the same time for a while and there's so much more I wanted to know (a sequel on football would be nice!). The Smiths were mandatory listening back then when I was a student, but he took it to a much deeper level than most.
I found the grandad parts a bit of a distraction. It's an article of faith to me to read books sequentially (even though nobody would ever know if I didn't!) but I really wanted to read the main narrative, and then another grandad section would appear, which I would try not to skim before resuming the thread.
This wasn't a learned volume where I got a huge list of books I really must read from. It's more a look back at my own reading through his (I have a database of every book I have ever read since the age of 12 and, over the last few years, have read a book from every bookcase in my local library, over 150) and the impossible struggle to squeeze an infinite amount of reading into a finite life, epitomised by Mark's massive collection which he will never read even if he stops buying them. 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.
I do disagree with some of his views. Libraries are still brilliant, for adults as well as kids. I reserved his book for 75p in hardback not long after it came out, had to wait for a couple of people, then it was mine! I have read loads of ebooks, but none on a kindle, I hate them too. Use a tablet or the app on your phone (it doesn't have to be Kindle either, there are alternatives and the library also have a massive digital library, and there's Open Library/Project Gutenburg where it literally costs nothing). The great benefit of ebooks is that you can highlight passages and then save the highlights apart from the book. I can within a couple of minutes bring up my saved passages from any e-book, something you just can't do with a paper book unless you a)deface it, and b)have it with you.
So yes a great book that makes you look back on your own life. Reading and watching sports like football are one of the few things you can enjoy practically your whole life. Other things come and go.
The book starts off very much a biography of Mark's reading then suddenly around page 200 football is mentioned. At that point, the books shifts into a slightly different perspective, more about Mark's career and how it intertwines his reading, and his reading drives his career. I lived in Manchester around the same time for a while and there's so much more I wanted to know (a sequel on football would be nice!). The Smiths were mandatory listening back then when I was a student, but he took it to a much deeper level than most.
I found the grandad parts a bit of a distraction. It's an article of faith to me to read books sequentially (even though nobody would ever know if I didn't!) but I really wanted to read the main narrative, and then another grandad section would appear, which I would try not to skim before resuming the thread.
This wasn't a learned volume where I got a huge list of books I really must read from. It's more a look back at my own reading through his (I have a database of every book I have ever read since the age of 12 and, over the last few years, have read a book from every bookcase in my local library, over 150) and the impossible struggle to squeeze an infinite amount of reading into a finite life, epitomised by Mark's massive collection which he will never read even if he stops buying them. 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.
I do disagree with some of his views. Libraries are still brilliant, for adults as well as kids. I reserved his book for 75p in hardback not long after it came out, had to wait for a couple of people, then it was mine! I have read loads of ebooks, but none on a kindle, I hate them too. Use a tablet or the app on your phone (it doesn't have to be Kindle either, there are alternatives and the library also have a massive digital library, and there's Open Library/Project Gutenburg where it literally costs nothing). The great benefit of ebooks is that you can highlight passages and then save the highlights apart from the book. I can within a couple of minutes bring up my saved passages from any e-book, something you just can't do with a paper book unless you a)deface it, and b)have it with you.
So yes a great book that makes you look back on your own life. Reading and watching sports like football are one of the few things you can enjoy practically your whole life. Other things come and go.
July 9, 2022
You'd struggle to enjoy this unless you grew up in the 70s in the north of England, and slightly resent it.
I wasn't sure what this book was trying to be. We sort of get a memoir of Hodkinson's life, supposedly focussed on his relation to books. But we also get a lot of information about his career as a journalist, which wasn't exactly scintillating. Passages about his favourite bands take up an inordinate amount of space (and for me all bands basically blur into one sweaty mass anyway). The parallel story about his grandfather's schizophrenia was a nice idea but I found little connection between this story and reading, so seemed ultimately irrelevant. There was also quite a lot about sports books - my least favourite type of book.
I enjoyed the appendices much much more than the book itself. The bit that described paraphernalia he's found in second-hand books (inscriptions, frontispieces, bookmarks) was beautiful. It touched one of my own reasons for loving books, which is their materiality, their acting as palimpsests of human meaning and desiring. His description of his various To Be Read piles was also nifty - shame his taste in books and mine don't match.
My suggestion for this book: less attempt at conventional memoir, more miscellaneous hodgepodge of reasons/anecdotes of why he likes books.
The tone I found uneven and not particularly appealing. Sometimes self-pitying, sometimes self-aggrandising, moments of self-deprecation rang false, and the humour was pretty mild stuff. He speaks of his 'working class' background with little love, but is also ready to take credit for dragging himself up by his coat tails.
I wasn't sure what the take home message was supposed to be. Despite your background, if you love books enough you'll be alright? But his love of books was apparently innate and irrepressible; it didn't seem like he had to sacrifice for it. There were some interesting points about the publishing trade basically neglecting the working class but he didn't sell his own writing (and publishing house) as special remedies to this problem.
I also just disagreed with some of his points about reading. His theory that you shouldn't read anything you don't immediately like (and in fact should judge a book only on its first page) would never see anyone challenged and would just be boring (I certainly wouldn't have got very far with his book). He seemed to believe in the myth of the sovereign writer, forging forth despite the advice of publishers and editors - and I think that shows.
In short, in trying to wrestle himself free from his background he's left with a problematic mistrust of interdependence and vulnerability, which (if I may play the psychologist) is perhaps behind the failure of his previous two relationships. And autonomy is boring to read about.
All this would have been bearable if the subject of the memoir was actually someone you've heard of. Alas this was not the case for me, and not many people I know.
Yes, this is a pretty brutal review, and I only feel comfortable about this because the book has received a lot of favourable press which I feel needs tempering. Also I reckon Hodkinson has a pretty thick skin.
I wasn't sure what this book was trying to be. We sort of get a memoir of Hodkinson's life, supposedly focussed on his relation to books. But we also get a lot of information about his career as a journalist, which wasn't exactly scintillating. Passages about his favourite bands take up an inordinate amount of space (and for me all bands basically blur into one sweaty mass anyway). The parallel story about his grandfather's schizophrenia was a nice idea but I found little connection between this story and reading, so seemed ultimately irrelevant. There was also quite a lot about sports books - my least favourite type of book.
I enjoyed the appendices much much more than the book itself. The bit that described paraphernalia he's found in second-hand books (inscriptions, frontispieces, bookmarks) was beautiful. It touched one of my own reasons for loving books, which is their materiality, their acting as palimpsests of human meaning and desiring. His description of his various To Be Read piles was also nifty - shame his taste in books and mine don't match.
My suggestion for this book: less attempt at conventional memoir, more miscellaneous hodgepodge of reasons/anecdotes of why he likes books.
The tone I found uneven and not particularly appealing. Sometimes self-pitying, sometimes self-aggrandising, moments of self-deprecation rang false, and the humour was pretty mild stuff. He speaks of his 'working class' background with little love, but is also ready to take credit for dragging himself up by his coat tails.
I wasn't sure what the take home message was supposed to be. Despite your background, if you love books enough you'll be alright? But his love of books was apparently innate and irrepressible; it didn't seem like he had to sacrifice for it. There were some interesting points about the publishing trade basically neglecting the working class but he didn't sell his own writing (and publishing house) as special remedies to this problem.
I also just disagreed with some of his points about reading. His theory that you shouldn't read anything you don't immediately like (and in fact should judge a book only on its first page) would never see anyone challenged and would just be boring (I certainly wouldn't have got very far with his book). He seemed to believe in the myth of the sovereign writer, forging forth despite the advice of publishers and editors - and I think that shows.
In short, in trying to wrestle himself free from his background he's left with a problematic mistrust of interdependence and vulnerability, which (if I may play the psychologist) is perhaps behind the failure of his previous two relationships. And autonomy is boring to read about.
All this would have been bearable if the subject of the memoir was actually someone you've heard of. Alas this was not the case for me, and not many people I know.
Yes, this is a pretty brutal review, and I only feel comfortable about this because the book has received a lot of favourable press which I feel needs tempering. Also I reckon Hodkinson has a pretty thick skin.
November 12, 2023
“This concept of being well read is a cultural stance, a judgement from on high. 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.”
This is yet another one of those delightful books about books, but it’s obviously about a lot more than that too, class, culture, aspiration and life’s vicissitudes are also explored in pleasing detail too. Penguin paperbacks, carefree holidays in seaside resorts, ambling in and out bookshops and other obscure spaces and yet at the same time the full weight of his grandfather’s mental illness casts a long and heavy shadow over many parts of his upbringing.
“Books don’t mind. They are patient. They await your return.”
He is excellent on the snobbery and narrow mindedness which has continued to dominate and dictate the publishing industry since its inception and captures all too well the self-serving, self-conviction and self-delusion which sees these self-appointed gatekeepers and their cliques to tell the rest of the world what good books are, and who they are for.
Hodkinson recaptures all the innocence, joy and magic of childhood and the seemingly endless curiosity and adventure that comes along with it, and of course there is a long list of delightful authors, titles and bands to hunt down afterwards too. This is a funny, charming and delight to soak up, an unashamed celebration of a working class life/childhood and all of the simple and profound pleasures it brings along with it.
“My parents feared I’d be bullied, picked off by the pack. By undermining me, they believed that were helping me, saving me. They were adhering to a wider class code. Where middle-class children are decorated with self-worth and confidence, and encouraged to rise from the crowd and celebrate themselves, the working class are taught to kowtow, defer, and view talent or individuality as a vanity rather than an accolade. There is also anti-intellectualism at work, as if they are afraid of you becoming clever in case you walk away, leave them behind. Books are regarded as signposts to this other life.”
This is yet another one of those delightful books about books, but it’s obviously about a lot more than that too, class, culture, aspiration and life’s vicissitudes are also explored in pleasing detail too. Penguin paperbacks, carefree holidays in seaside resorts, ambling in and out bookshops and other obscure spaces and yet at the same time the full weight of his grandfather’s mental illness casts a long and heavy shadow over many parts of his upbringing.
“Books don’t mind. They are patient. They await your return.”
He is excellent on the snobbery and narrow mindedness which has continued to dominate and dictate the publishing industry since its inception and captures all too well the self-serving, self-conviction and self-delusion which sees these self-appointed gatekeepers and their cliques to tell the rest of the world what good books are, and who they are for.
Hodkinson recaptures all the innocence, joy and magic of childhood and the seemingly endless curiosity and adventure that comes along with it, and of course there is a long list of delightful authors, titles and bands to hunt down afterwards too. This is a funny, charming and delight to soak up, an unashamed celebration of a working class life/childhood and all of the simple and profound pleasures it brings along with it.
“My parents feared I’d be bullied, picked off by the pack. By undermining me, they believed that were helping me, saving me. They were adhering to a wider class code. Where middle-class children are decorated with self-worth and confidence, and encouraged to rise from the crowd and celebrate themselves, the working class are taught to kowtow, defer, and view talent or individuality as a vanity rather than an accolade. There is also anti-intellectualism at work, as if they are afraid of you becoming clever in case you walk away, leave them behind. Books are regarded as signposts to this other life.”
April 16, 2022
One to add to my books about books shelf. Although Hodkinson and I have very different taste in reading material, I recognised the relationship he has with his books; they are a place of refuge and safety away from a complicated world. He also describes well the difference between obsession and hoarding versus collection and curation (and, like him, I’m sure I’m a collector not a hoarder, honest.)
Highly recommended for anyone who likes reading about other people’s relationship with books and stories (which I do). However, be aware this is a book-biography not a personal biography, so if you were interested in Mark Hodkinson’s life, beyond his childhood, its almost completely absent. This wasn’t a problem for me but might be for someone else.
Finally, I had one moment of unexpected joy and nostalgia, when it turned out, that the one book his parents had and kept on top of the wardrobe, my parents had as well. And I have exactly the same memory of pouring over it in fascination from a young age. (It's even now sat on the shelf downstairs, after I 'liberated' it from their house.) Folklore, Myths and Legends of Britain
Disclosure - I won a proof copy of this book, via a Caboodle competition.
Highly recommended for anyone who likes reading about other people’s relationship with books and stories (which I do). However, be aware this is a book-biography not a personal biography, so if you were interested in Mark Hodkinson’s life, beyond his childhood, its almost completely absent. This wasn’t a problem for me but might be for someone else.
Finally, I had one moment of unexpected joy and nostalgia, when it turned out, that the one book his parents had and kept on top of the wardrobe, my parents had as well. And I have exactly the same memory of pouring over it in fascination from a young age. (It's even now sat on the shelf downstairs, after I 'liberated' it from their house.) Folklore, Myths and Legends of Britain
Disclosure - I won a proof copy of this book, via a Caboodle competition.
February 22, 2022
Great memoir - read it now!
In No One Round Here Reads Tolstoy I saw reflected my own experience of growing up in an almost bookless household. Hodkinson's imagery and sparks of comedy make it an enjoyable read, and his Northern, gravelly narration adds to its realism. For example, this description a school rubgy lesson in chapter four:
'...frozen February mornings in flimsy nylon shorts and shirts, shivering, skin turning red, turning blue. Then perhaps towards the end of double maths in the afternoon, you’d feel an unusual sinking sensation in your lower stomach. You’d clutch at your ball bag and find that they had finally returned: one, two.'
His timing and delivery of the 'one, two' in the audiobook is brilliant.
Another example is when Mark describes a visit to his friend's house and perceives the difference to his own:
'The house had a rich, pleasing odour comprised of furniture wax, coffee and pipe smoke. They had an antique wooden clock on the mantelpiece with a loud tick; it was so peaceful in there, the rhythm almost counted me down to sleep.'
These are just two examples of the many great scenes from this evocative memoir, redolent of late 20th century Northern England, but with an appeal that transcends it. I'll be keeping an eye out for anything else written by Mark in the future.
In No One Round Here Reads Tolstoy I saw reflected my own experience of growing up in an almost bookless household. Hodkinson's imagery and sparks of comedy make it an enjoyable read, and his Northern, gravelly narration adds to its realism. For example, this description a school rubgy lesson in chapter four:
'...frozen February mornings in flimsy nylon shorts and shirts, shivering, skin turning red, turning blue. Then perhaps towards the end of double maths in the afternoon, you’d feel an unusual sinking sensation in your lower stomach. You’d clutch at your ball bag and find that they had finally returned: one, two.'
His timing and delivery of the 'one, two' in the audiobook is brilliant.
Another example is when Mark describes a visit to his friend's house and perceives the difference to his own:
'The house had a rich, pleasing odour comprised of furniture wax, coffee and pipe smoke. They had an antique wooden clock on the mantelpiece with a loud tick; it was so peaceful in there, the rhythm almost counted me down to sleep.'
These are just two examples of the many great scenes from this evocative memoir, redolent of late 20th century Northern England, but with an appeal that transcends it. I'll be keeping an eye out for anything else written by Mark in the future.
April 19, 2022
Like all memoirs, Mark Hodkinson’s account of growing up in Rochdale in the 1970s and 80s, is a partial, ‘curated’, telling of a life; viewed largely, as the subtitle suggests, through the prism of the author’s life as an unlikely reader and collector of books (the book starts and ends with a house move that leads him to wonder if the 3,500 books he needs to box up are an indication that his relationship with books has gone beyond a lifelong passion and is perhaps verging on the unhealthy). 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. I loved the random appendices though (as I suspect any book lover will). Hodkinson also weaves a tale of family tragedy throughout his text; these passages are beautifully and movingly written. Best title of the year so far, too!
July 20, 2022
I don’t know what made me pick this up but I wish I’d put it down 🤦♀️
I thought it would have been…. Different.
The beginning was quite interesting and told a pretty horrifying tale of schools during the 70’s which was quite interesting to learn but then the plot kind of feel to pieces … it just seemed to bounce to whatever the hell the author was thinking about at the time 🤷♀️
I think this is the book I’ve always feared when picking out non-fiction.
I thought it would have been…. Different.
The beginning was quite interesting and told a pretty horrifying tale of schools during the 70’s which was quite interesting to learn but then the plot kind of feel to pieces … it just seemed to bounce to whatever the hell the author was thinking about at the time 🤷♀️
I think this is the book I’ve always feared when picking out non-fiction.
November 18, 2022
I have a great deal of sympathy with Mark's love of books ( as a reformed book hoarder.). I also loved the descriptions of Rochdale and Sheffield. I am a proud owner of the two Simon Armitage books published by Mark's company Pomona. His writing is clear and moving, especially the descriptions of his family and Grandad in particular. A lovely book.
January 2, 2024
This one took forever, because despite or because it being an “easy” read, and conversational in style nearly, every other book was more tempting.
The title is great. His story not uninteresting, just not interesting enough to have me glued to the pages.
Reckon it’s a great read for people from the area (but they wouldn’t read it, as per the title) or the age.
The title is great. His story not uninteresting, just not interesting enough to have me glued to the pages.
Reckon it’s a great read for people from the area (but they wouldn’t read it, as per the title) or the age.
May 26, 2023
En femma för hyllningen och kärleken till böcker och läsning, men att den också är ganska opersonlig drar ner betyget en del. Den brittiska engelskan var också lite svår på sina ställen (alla dessa synonymer!).
July 19, 2022
Een ode aan het boek
July 23, 2022
This a book about books and reading, a book about growing up In the North of England in the 1980’s. It’s an autobiography with parallel sections talking about his grandfather and his life and how it effected the author and his Mum.
I started this book enjoying the anecdotes and tales of books read, characters met etc I know Sheffield and Rochdale a bit which helped me frame the narrative and as well as having stood in the dole line, and been through CSE’s instead of O’ levels.
By the latter part of the book however id lost real interest and when the author is disparaging of modern libraries, he completely lost me! I work in a library and we are fighting to stay open with a diminishing readership as Kindles and e readers take over, and ‘real’ books fall by the wayside. It’s a sad fact of this day and age, but with this fact libraries need to bend and re shape themselves to encompass so much more and embrace the new. Books are very much the heart and soul of our library, but we do a lot more as well, although I’ve never put a cardboard box on my head abs pretended to be a clock… not yet anyway!!
Worth a read, but it does go in a bit!
I started this book enjoying the anecdotes and tales of books read, characters met etc I know Sheffield and Rochdale a bit which helped me frame the narrative and as well as having stood in the dole line, and been through CSE’s instead of O’ levels.
By the latter part of the book however id lost real interest and when the author is disparaging of modern libraries, he completely lost me! I work in a library and we are fighting to stay open with a diminishing readership as Kindles and e readers take over, and ‘real’ books fall by the wayside. It’s a sad fact of this day and age, but with this fact libraries need to bend and re shape themselves to encompass so much more and embrace the new. Books are very much the heart and soul of our library, but we do a lot more as well, although I’ve never put a cardboard box on my head abs pretended to be a clock… not yet anyway!!
Worth a read, but it does go in a bit!
September 29, 2022
Reflections and lessons learned:
“The walls are closing in… they used to be over there, a few meters away. Now, if I lean over, I can touch them. This is what happens when you collect books and store them on big shelves in a small house…”
Tbr piles, a love for Faber and Faber, descriptions of all kinds of bookshops… lots of lovely descriptions for anyone involved in the book industry alongside a book life focussed autobiography
“The walls are closing in… they used to be over there, a few meters away. Now, if I lean over, I can touch them. This is what happens when you collect books and store them on big shelves in a small house…”
Tbr piles, a love for Faber and Faber, descriptions of all kinds of bookshops… lots of lovely descriptions for anyone involved in the book industry alongside a book life focussed autobiography
September 15, 2022
Disappointed. I was attracted by the cover and title, but it didn't do much for me. Its a combination of a memoir and a book about the role of literature, and while bits were interesting, most was dull. Not for me
November 8, 2025
This is an odd book. I bought it without knowing anything about the author based on the title and because I love books about books. It started off well with the author describing how he came to love reading despite coming from a family of non-readers in a humorous and endearing way. I struggled with much of the middle section covering his life as a student and later as an adult, partially because the narrative would be abruptly interupted to tell some story about his mentally ill grandfather. These chapters did have some interesting information about the publishing industry (such as how much profit is made on a book that costs 10 pounds and how publishers dispose of remainders) as the author was a journalist and eventually had his own independent press, but the tangents and grandfather interludes made it hard to stay engaged. The ending which discusses the author's 3500+ book collection is a amusing return to form, but then the book goes off the rails again with the appendices.
I'm not sorry that I read this book but I wish I had the ability to skim sections; I don't because it feels like cheating. I wish the focus had stayed more on books rather than the general memoir content, though the anecdote that inspired the book's title was pretty funny.
I'm not sorry that I read this book but I wish I had the ability to skim sections; I don't because it feels like cheating. I wish the focus had stayed more on books rather than the general memoir content, though the anecdote that inspired the book's title was pretty funny.
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