I felt like this was written just for me, and I think everyone will feel this way

THE most wonderful, funny, clever, charming, evocative book.

A book for people who love books, by a person who loves books. Bookworms unite (or just sit in our separate corners and read!)

A delicously nostalgic treat that will make you want to pull out all those old favourites again

Artfully evokes that particular magic of reading as a child… Deliciously unrepentant, Mangan’s Bookworm makes a timely case not just for how vital reading is, but also for rereading books as a child, and how reading remains consoling, fortifying and, sometimes, magical.

A wonderful romp through the pages of childhood, illuminated by wisdom, humour and enthusiasm.

What Mangan does brilliantly is express the experience of reading and articulate the emotional connections we make with stories. She understands how books become entwined in our lives and help us make sense of the world. You don’t need to have enjoyed the same books as she has to recognise the pure, life-affirming joy of reading that Bookworm celebrates so eloquently.

Lucy Mangan has enough comic energy to power the National Grid... We need this new memoir about her childhood of being a bookworm. It's enchanting.

To read Lucy Mangan’s memoir of growing up bookish is to be taken back to a time in life when reading wasn’t merely a gentle pleasure or mild obligation but an activity as essential as breathing.

Anyone who has ever preferred books to life will recognise Lucy Mangan as a kindred spirit. Her moving, funny, honest and superbly-written memoir about how childhood reading shapes our personalities, memories and chances could not be more timely or more needed in an age of library closures, embattled Humanities teaching and Philistinism.

Lucy Mangan's passionate, amusing and nostalgic reflection upon her favourite children’s books deserves to become as much of a classic as the novels she revisits.

A witty and thorough history of reading for children from the 17th century to the present day. Fiercely unsentimental and often funny, it's a memoir that will strike a ringing chord with anyone who spent most of their childhood glued to a book.

Deft, warm and beautifully balanced. Made me smile. Made me glow. Made me think again and again.

Funny, nostalgic and super-interesting… Warm, witty and a must-read for every bookworm.

The Guardian columnist has composed an enthusiastic love letter to childhood reading, and the classic books that have shaped many young lives, as well as providing a resource and guide on how to build a children’s library

Funny and engaging.

Bookworm is for anyone who longed to be on Kirrin Island with the Famous Five, slip through a back of a wardrobe into Narnia or will always think fondly of the penis named Ralph in Judy Blume’s Forever

A warm, witty story about stories and the way they shape us.

Lucy Mangan’s passionate, amusing and nostalgic reflection upon her favourite children’s books deserves to become as much of a classic as the novels she revisits.

Enchanting.

Joyful and heart-warming.

Entertaining and hugely engaging… An entirely inspiring read.

… like a heated but enjoyable discussion with a best friend bookworm.

A love letter to the books we all read as children.

[W]ise and witty… all the time Mangan has the ability to be ceaselessly and apparently effortlessly funny

If you're a book lover of any form then you will almost certainly get something from this book… you will look fondly back on the books of your childhood too

In Lucy Mangan’s Bookworm…childhood books are brought vividly to life, as are the remembered pleasures of first encountering them

Lucy Mangan's funny, warm Bookworm is personal and universal in the way that the very best books are

Beautifully narrated, Bookworm brings the favourite characters of our collective childhoods back to life and brilliantly uses them to tell her own story

An enchanting, nostalgic, comfort read

Exquisitely rendered, with raw anguish sublimated into lyrical prose.

Heartbreaking … Arguably the best of the new wave of Irish writers to have emerged over the last decade

Ryan has the gift of ventriloquism - he inhabits his fictional creations thoroughly, enveloping you in their worlds

Sublime

From a Low and Quiet Sea by Donal Ryan made me laugh and cry and forced me to look strangers in the eye

Beautifully bleak and characterised by his remarkable ability to write about grief and common humanities.

Beautiful, compassionate

Superlatives wouldn’t do for describing From a Low and Quiet Sea … understated, and gloriously heart rendering

Strout turns her clear, incisive gaze on the intricacies and betrayals of small town life

Anything is Possible is predictably great because it's written by Elizabeth Strout, and brilliantly unpredictable - because it is written by Elizabeth Strout