A review by jobinsonlis
The Child That Books Built: A Life in Reading by Francis Spufford

3.0

I liked this book less this time than I apparently did before (I have no memories of this book but it had a higher rating from me several years ago). It’s not really a piece of literary criticism and it’s not really an autobiography. I’m not sure what it is. The author isolates some broad ideas and broadly ruminates on them, occasionally offering devastating peeks into his childhood that raise more questions for me than they answered. I enjoyed it when he focused down on specific authors—C.S. Lewis, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Laura Ingalls Wilder were the big ones—but I didn’t always find the bigger statements he was making around them that interesting. It might be because his childhood literary touchstones weren’t mine—I loved horror as soon as I could—but mostly I think he was keeping his audience at a distance, which doesn’t work that well when you’re the subject you’re writing about. He doesn’t owe anybody an examination of his childhood but also, I mean, he’s the one that brought it up.