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In the dedication of The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry ruefully noticed that “if all grown-ups were once children, only few of them remember it.” Reading Bookworm, Lucy Mangan’s latest opus, will easily convince you that the British journalist undoubtedly belongs to that supposedly meagre number of adults still connected to their child self.

In every page of her Memoir of Childhood Reading, she is able to funnily and keenly conjure not only the titles and the content of the books she has read between the age of 2 and 16, but also, more significantly, the vivid impressions she derived from them. She astutely characterizes her enjoyment or dissatisfaction as a young reader, alternating between raving enthusiasm and scathing ranting – Dr Seuss’ Cat in the Hat and “drowsy” Tolkien being her preferred targets. Nevertheless, she includes both in her “ideal bookshelf”, by unabashedly and rightly contending that “a bad book is better than no book at all”.

The great strength of Bookworm is its first half, in which Mangan intertwines seamlessly several genres. While evoking her childhood readings, she also portrays both touchingly and laughingly the workings of her generous yet strange family. Throughout  her chronological memoir, she provides increasingly illuminating digressions and entertaining insights into the history of children’s literature and well-known authors’ surprising biographies.

Though high-spirited, the rest of Bookworm is not as endearing. Because little Mangan begins to tackle longer novels, the narrator mostly dwells on reporting and juxtaposing plots. Unfortunately, it leaves less space for biographical anecdotes and Mangan’s personal impressions and observations. Besides, clouded with repetitions, the style becomes less elegant. While perfectly fitted to her columns, the writer’s tendency to accumulate tropes, such as capital letters, rhetorical questions and never-ending and deadpan footnotes, becomes a bit boring in the long run.

However, the two last chapters of Bookworm are excellent. The penultimate movingly reminds us how the liking for a book can be heightened by the sole fact that it was gifted by  a now deceased close relative. The closing chapter is a resounding defence of the reading audience’s entitlements French novelist Daniel Pennac once enumerated in his manifesto The Rights of the Reader (2006, Walker Books): everybody should be allowed to be or not to be a bookworm, to reread, to read anything, to read anywhere and, above all, to be fully absorbed in a book.