My Lifelong Love Affair With Books

Writers I've loved to read

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

Writers I’ve Enjoyed Reading

I’ve loved books all my life. Well, from the age of five onwards when I discovered them at school. As a child, books gave me access to other worlds and fired my imagination. Enid Blyton was the first author I was introduced to at infant school, not having been read to before then. I especially recall being amused by Mr Saucepan Man from The Magic Faraway Tree. I loved the daily chapter being read out from one of these books.

Then, when I was about eight, I would spend many hours sitting on the library floor, unaccompanied, choosing my four books to take home. The smell of the mustiness of the books, the kindliness of librarian Mrs Williams, and the magical sight of all the books for me to choose from were always great sources of pleasure. My teacher in primary school had asked if we had books at home and when I said no, she suggested I join the library. So I did. My mother came with me to enroll but afterwards, I always went alone. It wasn’t too far from our house.

I remember when I was about twelve, sitting in front of a roaring fire on a cold winter’s day, engrossed in Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens. I reached the part where Bill Sikes, having brutally murdered the poor hapless Nancy (apologies for plot disclosure) was dispensing her body into the Thames when someone calling me as if from far away, interrupted the flow of the story. I reluctantly dragged my attention from the page. My mother was standing right next to me bemused at the time it was taking to get me mentally out of this book. I was so immersed.

Today, If you looked down the list of books I’ve read on Goodreads, you would see the same authors’ names crop up time and again. This is because when I find a book I really enjoy I look for others by the same author. For instance, take Ian McEwan, the British author and screenwriter of my generation. The first of his books I read was The Cement Garden. Written in 1978 and made into a film in 1993.

The reviews for it use words like beautiful, disgusting, and macabre. It’s a short book about four orphaned children and their goings-on over one summer. The quality of the writing was superb and made me want to read more by him, even though the plot was undeniably disturbing.

The next book I read of his was Enduring Love. I remember reading the tragic accident that takes place early in the book with not a little surprise because I had read of this happening in real life. It made the news, yet here it was in a fictional story. Much of McEwan’s work was like that, I found, as though he kept a notebook of situations and events from the news to use in his stories; familiar current issues often cropped up in his books.

But it was the writing that drew me on to read his work even when the ending proved a disappointment, as it sometimes did. The much-acclaimed Atonement was one such story. Many of his books were made into films. I haven’t read all of them, I stopped after Saturday; I think.

I went to see Ian McEwan one year at the Hay Festival of Literature, an annual literary festival held in the Welsh town not far from where I live, known for its many bookshops. I loved this festival and went every year for many years; it was a cornucopia of not only literature, but ideas, theories, politics, and academic writings brought to the public by known and unknown authors.

The audience for Ian McEwan’s talk was huge. He read a passage from his latest book, which I believe was Solar, and someone in the audience put their hand up and told him that the exact device he used in this passage had been included in another fairly recent book by another author. There followed a discussion on how authors are also readers and may be influenced by something they’ve read and unknowingly reproduce in their own work. Such incidents must happen from time to time.

I saw so many authors at this amazing festival over the years, including Andrea Levy whose book Small Island was made into a television two-parter; Edna O’Brien, the Irish author who wrote Girl With Green Eyes and The Country Girls, a trilogy about two girls living in Ireland in the 1950s.

These are just a few of the many fiction writers I saw there over the years. But I also saw non-fiction authors of various genres introducing their latest offering, often to do with politics, psychology, sociology, and more. I took my grandchildren to see their favourite authors, too.

Another writer I read consecutive books by, is Tracy Chevalier, author of Girl With a Pearl Earring. After reading that one I looked out others by her. I went on to read The Last Runaway and Remarkable Creatures. I enjoyed all three of these books but was not tempted to read more. I will probably come back to her.

As any of you who have read my previous posts may be aware, I’m having trouble immersing myself in fiction at the moment, but that doesn’t mean I’ve fallen out of love with books. My current reading pile is all non-fiction.

Have you read any of the authors I have loved to read? Can you recommend any books by one of them that you have read and I haven’t mentioned? Were you a book lover from an early age? I’d love to know in the Comments.