Does bookworm by Lucy Mangan work if you are not her age?

[Doryhunky]

I love love love Bookworm. It is so well written. I would like to get it for a friend in her 70s but I am worried that a big part of why
The book worked is that I Am the same generation as the author so it was like reliving my childhood and that won’t be the same if the reader isnt. What do you think?

Does your friend have children? If so, she may have read some of the "younger" books to her children, so would be familiar with them that way. And many of the books are classics which would have been around when your friend was growing up, so I'd say go for it

I'm 63 and I enjoyed it - quite a few of the books are ones I read as a child/teenager, though some are ones I only came across when I was a children's librarian.

I’m 54 and still love the St Claire’s and Malory towers series, also black beauty if you think she’ll like then buy it, tell her about it first then if she seems interested get it for her. I loved A little Princess on audiobook.

Tricky. I too am exactly the same vintage as LM, and Bookworm really spoke to me- it's was just such a good fit for my childhood and my own book experiences.
I do think someone in their 70s will have bypassed many of the later works covered in it.
Shame, as it's a fantastic memoir.

I loved it, and am also the same generation. I was planning to lend it to my Mum, 72, as she loves books and anyway read lots of them to us. Also there is a chapter on boarding school books and most of the ones that I read that she mentions were my Mum's, and in some cases my Gran's.

Also I discovered about half the horse books she mentions in my mum's loft (they were hers not ours).

Not advice but I loved this book so much. Perhaps the only section that might not relate to someone older it the Judy Blume one but then again I hadn't read the CS Lewis ones but grasped the importance of them.

I gave it to my mum, 70, who loved it. All those books we read at the same age as Lucy Manganese my mum introduced me to. It was a real hit with her, a lovely connection. Go for it, OP.

Manganese Sorry, Lucy!

I loved it - same vintage as LM but my mum who's 65 would 100% have read the majority of the books & given that she bought my books til I was 14-15 so would be aware of them.

How old is the author?

Lucy Mangan was born in 1974. I really enjoyed it but I'm only a few years older, and she seems to have read a lot of the 1970s Puffins that were a staple of my bookshelves too - I got a lot of them secondhand.

My mum would be 76 now if she was still alive and I think she might have enjoyed quite a bit of this.

While I agree the book has a special joy for those of us quite close in age to the author, I think the first question to ask is: does someone still read or reread children's and YA books, those published when they were young and since, and those written for younger generations? My mum did, and her sisters have collected and read them as adults.