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. 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. The book starts off very much a biography of Mark's reading then suddenly around page 200 football is mentioned. 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.

Hodkinson has done his back in, but the driver makes clear he is “under no obligation whatsoever” to help.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). 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. Hodkinson's imagery and sparks of comedy make it an enjoyable read, and his Northern, gravelly narration adds to its realism. The book begins with the author moving home and realising he has more books than he could read in his lifetime. 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.

In his head he is in dusty Algiers – “the fig trees, the red sky” – watching the sea sending “long, lazy” waves across the sand.This develops into a memoir of his childhood (in the 1970s) and coming of age as a reader and eventually a working journalist. Perhaps that’s why I so enjoyed the way he talks about literature, some negative remarks about one of my own works excepted. His writing is clear and moving, especially the descriptions of his family and Grandad in particular.