Cover artwork by Abbey Lossing
Lucy Mangan, the beloved Guardian television critic and i newspaper columnist, will publish the next chapter of her life in reading, BOOKISH: How Reading Shapes Our Lives, with Vintage imprint Square Peg in 2025. Lucy’s co-agents, Juliet Pickering at Blake Friedmann and Louise Lamont at LBA Books, sold World English rights to Rowan Yapp, former publishing director, with Square Peg Publishing Director Marianne Tatepo steering the project to the bookshelves. The book will publish in hardback, eBook & audiobook – narrated by Lucy herself – on 13 March 2025.
BOOKISH is the highly anticipated sequel to BOOKWORM, Lucy’s popular memoir about childhood reading that was shortlisted for a Books Are My Bag Award. In this new book, Mangan charts how books of all kinds delight, guide, comfort and strengthen us throughout our adult lives. Revisiting the books of all genres – from thrillers and bonkbusters to historical sagas and apocalyptic zombie stories – that ferried her through each important stage of life, BOOKISH is a coming-of-age via reading. It's an ode to our favourite bookish spaces – from the smallest second-hand bookstalls to libraries, glorious big bookshops and our very own favourite book places – and explores how books help us connect with the people we love through shared stories.
‘To be writing about reading again is a joy I'm quite sure I have not earned, but have loved every minute of it anyway,’ said Lucy. ‘I can only thank Vintage from the bottom of my bookcase for the opportunity. I hope that readers enjoy meeting old friends within its covers and maybe making new ones too.’
‘We can think of no better advocate for reading – and hoarding – books than pathological tsundoku Lucy Mangan,’ Marianne Tatepo, Publishing Director of Square Peg, added. ‘Equal parts hilarious and generous, Lucy’s chronicles show how books of all stripes can be an escape, a comfort, a catalyst – changing people, and lives. BOOKISH is also a paean to the people who make reading possible for the many: the librarians, teachers and educators who instil a passion for words in communities even as accessibility is under threat. This book has a special place in our hearts – we cannot wait to share it with the many who loved and championed BOOKWORM; and bookish people everywhere.’
Juliet Pickering and Louise Lamont said: ‘Like a long, satisfying chat with your best friend, BOOKISH is a warm and wonderful tribute to the power of stories in the most befuddling of times, steering Lucy and the reader through our main adult milestones: love, sex, marriage, parenthood and grief, and making an irresistible case for handing our love of books on to generations to come. Anyone who loves reading will find deep joy – and some heartbreak – in these pages.’
Image: Stylist Magazine
About Lucy Mangan
Lucy Mangan is a journalist and columnist. She was educated in Catford and Cambridge; she studied English at the latter and then spent two years training as a solicitor, but left as soon as she qualified and went to work much more happily in a bookshop instead. She got a work experience placement at the Guardian in 2003 and hung around until they gave her a job. Lucy is now TV critic at the Guardian, and a columnist for The i newspaper. She has written for most of the major women's magazines, including Grazia, Cosmopolitan, and Stylist. She was named Columnist of the Year at the PPA Awards in 2013.
In 2009, a collection of her columns from the Guardian was published as MY FAMILY AND OTHER DISASTERS. Her other works include HOPSCOTCH AND HANDBAGS: The Essential Guide to Being a Girl, a book about the experience of growing up in 80s suburbia, and THE RELUCTANT BRIDE, the lightly-fictionalised story of her wedding. INSIDE CHARLIE’S CHOCOLATE FACTORY, a commemoration of 50 years of Roald Dahl's CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY, was published by Puffin UK/US in 2014.
Lucy's memoir BOOKWORM, a personal history and celebration of children’s literature, was published by Vintage in March 2018. Her debut novel ARE WE HAVING FUN YET? was published by Profile Books in October 2021.
She lives in London with one husband, one son, two cats and fourteen double-stacked Billy bookcases.
Praise for Lucy Mangan’s BOOKISH
‘A bookworm’s delight. A delightful whistle stop tour through some books I’ve loved all my life as well as books I discovered through reading it. I devoured this book.’ – Sara Collins
‘Comforting, funny and moving – BOOKISH is wonderful to curl up with on good days and bad.’ – Sali Hughes
Praise for Lucy Mangan’s BOOKWORM
‘In Lucy Mangan’s BOOKWORM childhood books are brought vividly to life, as are the remembered pleasures of first encountering them… Mangan guides us along her bursting childhood shelves… It’s a delightfully cheerful and humorous romp through children’s literature.’ – Harriet Baker, Times Literary Supplement
‘In her joyful memoir BOOKWORM Lucy Mangan revisits our most beloved childhood books, brings the characters of our collective childhood back to life and uses them – with great wit and wisdom – to tell her own story. Wonderful.’ – Nina Stibbes, The Observer
‘This is THE most wonderful, funny, clever, charming, evocative book’ – India Knight
‘A wonderful romp through the pages of childhood, illuminated by wisdom, humour and enthusiasm.’ – Bernard Cornwell
‘Anyone who has ever preferred books to life will recognise Lucy Mangan as a kindred spirit. Her moving, funny, honest and superbly-written memoir about how childhood reading shapes our personalities, memories and chances could not be more timely or more needed in an age of library closures, embattled Humanities teaching and Philistinism.’ – Amanda Craig
‘She understands how books become entwined in our lives and help us make sense of the world. You don’t need to have enjoyed the same books as she has to recognise the pure, life-affirming joy of reading that BOOKWORM celebrates’ – Observer