Bookworm cover art

Bookworm

A Memoir of Childhood Reading

 Preview
Try Premium Plus free
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Bookworm

By: Lucy Mangan
Narrated by: Lucy Mangan
Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

Confirm Purchase
Pay using card ending in
Switch payment method
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.
Cancel

About this listen

When Lucy Mangan was little, stories were everything. They opened up new worlds and cast light on all the complexities she encountered in this one.

She was whisked away to Narnia and Kirrin Island and Wonderland. She ventured down rabbit holes and womble burrows into midnight gardens and chocolate factories. She wandered the countryside with Milly-Molly-Mandy and played by the tracks with the Railway Children. With Charlotte's Web she discovered death, and with Judy Blume it was boys. No wonder she left the house only for her weekly trip to the library or to spend her pocket money on amassing her own at home.

In Bookworm, Lucy revisits her childhood reading with wit, love and gratitude. She relives our best-beloved books and their extraordinary creators and looks at the thousand subtle ways they shape our lives. She also disinters a few forgotten treasures to inspire the next generation of bookworms and set them on their way.

Lucy brings the favourite characters of our collective childhoods back to life - prompting endless rereadings, rediscoveries, and, inevitably, fierce debate - and brilliantly uses them to tell her own story, that of a born and unrepentant bookworm.

Cover credit: Laura Barrett

©2018 Lucy Mangan (P)2018 Audible, Ltd Art & Literature Authors Literary History & Criticism Women Memoir Funny Heartfelt Witty Feel-Good

Listeners also enjoyed...

 The Gifts of Reading cover art
A Year on Our Farm cover art
Sway cover art
Just off for a Walk cover art
A Circle of Quiet cover art
The Great Fortune cover art
The Fall of the Roman Empire cover art
My Ear at His Heart cover art
Joy cover art
Candide, or Optimism cover art
Ring the Hill cover art
Dirty Briefs cover art
Wild Fell cover art
Red Sauce Brown Sauce cover art
Life, Love and The Archers cover art
The Year of Reading Dangerously cover art
All stars
Most relevant  
I struggled to complete the final 3 chapters, I found the earlier chapters more autobiographical

mixed feelings.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Has sent me scuttling off to eBay to hunt out all the versions of the books I read as a child. Thank you Lucy Mangan.

This book is about me

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I feel this book was written for me, it was a beautiful walk through my childhood. Reminding me of some books I’d forgotten about....did every teacher read The Phantom Tollbooth to their class?
I made lots of reasons to listen to huge chunks of this book...longer walks etc and I didn’t want it to end. Lucy is brilliant at narrating her own story and it felt as though it brought some depth and meaning to it that someone else couldn’t have.
As a child I was a bookworm and as an adult I’ve found as much joy in people as I do books....well almost. And I’m glad I’m called Cordelia than ‘Anne with an e’

Nostalgic walk through my book reading childhood

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I in general like to read a book about books so when I saw this title I knew have had to consume it😁 I enjoyed listening to this audiobook. The stories were interesting and well narrated.

Just perfect for the bookworms😁

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
An entertaining listen throughout, and I think in a book like this, the fact that it was read by the author was very helpful. I do wonder if I would have preferred to read this rather than listen to it! Sometimes I had to go back and listen to a section over again, particularly if it was about a book I hadn't read. I recognised a fellow bookworm in Lucy, and many of her reading habits, as well as many of the books she delighted in, reflected my own as a child. Unlike Lucy, I can remember the exact moment when I realised that these were not just words on a page, and a book came alive for me. It was definitely one of the best moments of my life, somehow made better by the fact that it happened when I was alone.

Lucy, I have to give you one little correction. I actually stopped listening for a bit after you made this mistake, because I was so gutted! When you were talking about The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, you said that Lucy entered the wardrobe and met a talking lion, whom she loved, and whom the other children couldn't see at first, but then they saw him later. No, no, no! She meets the talking faun, Mr Tumnus, not Aslan, who comes into the story much later on. You are muddling it up with Prince Caspian, which was clearly your favourite of the series. What astounds me is that nobody corrected you on it, and that it got completely missed in the editing. So there you go!

However, apart from this, I loved the book, and they were many laugh-out-loud moments as well, particularly in those parts in which Lucy describes her family. Thank you for raising the status of us Bookworms.

Thoroughly enjoyable

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I loved listening to this book on Audible. especially so since it was narrated by the Author herself. So I was hearing the words directly from her. She didn't read Fairy Tales folks!!! How is it possible to get through your childhood without reading a single Fairytale? I lived on Fairytales. I went through all the rainbow of colours of the Coloured Fairytales series. I devoured them over and over again. I got lost in the magical realms. I was scared by the evil characters, charmed by the fairies, bewitched by the magic and spellbound by the stories themselves. My nose was always in a book as a child. I felt so attuned to what Lucy Mangan was saying. Every time she mentioned a book we'd both read, a cheer would escape from my lips. There were books she'd read that I hadn't and equally there were books I'd read but she hadn't mentioned. But mostly we were well read in the same. If anyone has memories of the books they read as a child, didn't fully understand them at the time, but now with adult hindsight and appreciation for words have grasped their true meaning, then you are a True Bookworm my Friend!

I am a Bookworm

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I feel this is the story of me. Every book worn should read this and relive all those precious memories and books.

This is me

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
In fact, it feels like I could have. I was so moved by this book, it described my childhood. I laughed and almost cried at times. I am sure Lucy and I could have been friends as children - well sat in the same room with our noses in a book anyway!A joyous read from start to finish. Off to buy ten copies for fellow bookworm friends.

The book I wish I’d written

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Dry, witty and a real trip down memory lane. Want to read them all again. Thank you.

Nostalgia

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I found myself lost in childhood memory and laughing out loud so often that my husband thought I was having a small fit.
Lucy’s ability to take you back to those days when the great joy in the world was a new fresh book that was yours alone is unique.
I have gone on to buy all her book and she must now write faster to keep up with my need to listen to her voice .
An absolute classic for all .

Do yourself a favour buy this book

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews