| New book by Mark Hodkinson: No One Round Here Reads Tolstoy 22:45 - Dec 14 with 3119 views | LDuffy |
Dale fans,
Just to make you aware — Mark's major publisher debut, No One Round Here Reads Tolstoy, Memoirs of a Working-Class Reader is available soon on Canongate (and NOW via Pomona).
It’s basically his life story set against a love of reading and writing and how he ended up with a personal library of 3,500 books, after going to a run-down, madhouse school (in Rochdale!) where he wasn’t considered clever enough to sit O Levels.
He writes about his time in various bands (supporting The Stone Roses and Pulp etc), working as a journalist and running an independent publishing house . Also interwoven is the story of his grandad who, despite being mentally ill, was his best friend growing up.
It costs £16.99 in shops but is available for £12 (plus postage, I’m afraid) here: https://www.pomonauk.com/shop/store.php It will be on sale everywhere from early next year but if you order from Pomona smart-ish, we’ll try and get the books out before Christmas.
The very talented author, Benjamin Myers, kindly says this of the book:
‘Mark Hodkinson is one of the great unsung heroes of literature, and here he tackles perhaps the last taboo in publishing: class. With verve, insight and perfectly-captured period detail, he reminds us that not only are books sacred objects that should be available to everyone, but also that working class voices remain more marginalised and underrepresented than ever. No One Round Here Reads Tolstoy redresses this imbalance beautifully, and in a just world will kickstart a long-overdue working class literary renaissance’
All best wishes,
Lucy Duffy, Pomona
https://app.photobucket.com/u/Markhod70/a/4bb362bc-5856-4a30-8fb5-77d9d0d432fe/p
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| New book by Mark Hodkinson: No One Round Here Reads Tolstoy on 09:24 - Dec 15 with 2900 views | Dalenet |
whoops. Marked down by mistake. I am a fan of Marks books | | | |
| New book by Mark Hodkinson: No One Round Here Reads Tolstoy on 11:30 - Feb 3 with 1995 views | D_Dale |
Seemingly, MH's book (reviewed last Sunday in The Observer, below) seems to be out; but is there anything about Dale?
This account of a working-class reader, writer and now publisher of Simon Armitage is a love letter to the north and the printed word
Andrew Martin
Sun 30 Jan 2022 11.00 GMT
26
Mark Hodkinson was born in a “modest, boxy” house in a Manchester suburb. There was one book in the house, kept on the top of a wardrobe with other revered items such as his cycling proficiency certificate. The book was Folklore, Myths and Legends of Britain, and Hodkinson writes that: “When I see the front cover again, an illustration of Cernunnos, the Celtic horned god, looking startled and irked … I fall through time.”
Hodkinson’s family moved to Rochdale in the mid-1970s, when he was 10, and he still lives there. He became not only a working-class reader — as per the subtitle of this book — but also a working-class publisher and writer too, which makes him a very rare bird.
The upper-middle-class grip on British literature may be stronger than ever today, working classness being, as Hodkinson writes, “disavowed and discarded” in favour of an American notion of aspiration. Accounts of working-class life must be smuggled under flags of convenience. Hodkinson lists them: “female, ‘misery lit’, black, ethnic, gay, Welsh, Scottish or Irish.”
He once consulted a therapist (because he’d got a bit worried about having so many books), who told him they were his ‘metaphorical friends’
And of course the working classes are more elusive these days. Of 70s Rochdale, Hodkinson writes: “Many streets had mills on them, standing tall and wide like battleships, completely out of scale with the rest of the surroundings”, whereas Rochdale now is “Anytown UK … spotted with litter-strewn retail parks”.
Working-class writers did get a look-in during the 50s and 60s, when prosperity and permissiveness shook up factory life and the social-realist “kitchen sink” genre emerged, mainly in the north. The young Hodkinson read those books but found the protagonists too earthbound, too fixed in their northern locales. They were not the inspiration of his writing and reading, nor the reason he has now accumulated 3,500 books.
He has none of the chippiness afflicting some of the kitchen sinkers; he is not out for revenge. Instead, he’s a dreamer. He reads to be “spirited away from reality”. We see the young Hodkinson lying in bed “with books fanned out around me like numbers on a giant clock”. His reading is of a piece with his “thinking while drifting, across wasteland and cemeteries”. He once consulted a therapist (because he’d got a bit worried about having so many books), who told him they were his metaphorical friends.
I know Hodkinson slightly. Like him, I was born in a modest, boxy house in the north (there were about 10 books in ours). Perhaps that’s why I so enjoyed the way he talks about literature, some negative remarks about one of my own works excepted.
On a snowy day in Rochdale, the young Hodkinson reads The Outsider by Albert Camus. In his head he is in dusty Algiers — “the fig trees, the red sky” — watching the sea sending “long, lazy” waves across the sand. He describes Billy Casper, urchin-like hero of A Kestrel for a Knave by Barry Hines (a late kitchen sink work), as “half-boy, half-pigeon”. Of Morrissey: “The words he uttered were drawn from the end of the rainbow — ‘charming’, ‘elegant’, ‘marvellous’.”
There are vivid character sketches of authors Hodkinson has published. Simon Armitage, doing star jumps with his wife on their daughter’s trampoline when he was made poet laureate. Hunter Davies, knocking on, but not so much sprightly as spritely. As they walk through the Lake District chomping on apples, “I half expected him to suggest a game of hide and seek”.
There is much dark comedy about Hodkinson’s publishing career. A driver brings a truck load of 3,000 unsold books, to be stored in a lockup. Hodkinson has done his back in, but the driver makes clear he is “under no obligation whatsoever” to help.
This is a book about the north; it is also about publishing, writing and music, but it transcends its subjects and meets the criterion Hodkinson sets out in his preface: “The best books, the same as the best days, skitter on the breeze. They go their own way.”
Andrew Martin’s latest book, Yorkshire: There and Back, is published in May by Corsair
No One Round Here Reads Tolstoy: Memoirs of a Working-Class Reader by Mark Hodkinson is published by Canongate (£16.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply | | | |
| New book by Mark Hodkinson: No One Round Here Reads Tolstoy on 11:45 - Feb 3 with 1969 views | SuddenLad |
I bought it. It's a great read and as a fellow bibliophile, I can identify with much of what he describes. The continuing 'Grandad' theme throughout, is moving and excellent.
I would recommend it, but it might not be for those who are looking for a book saturated in Dale stories. |  |
| “It is easier to fool people, than to convince them that they have been fooled†|
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| New book by Mark Hodkinson: No One Round Here Reads Tolstoy on 12:34 - Feb 3 with 1843 views | since58 |
£14.95 On Amazon plus free delivery. | | | |
| New book by Mark Hodkinson: No One Round Here Reads Tolstoy on 12:39 - Feb 3 with 1814 views | judd |
| New book by Mark Hodkinson: No One Round Here Reads Tolstoy on 12:34 - Feb 3 by since58 |
£14.95 On Amazon plus free delivery. |
If you use the Pomona site linked in the OP the author gets to keep a bit more of the price. |  |
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| New book by Mark Hodkinson: No One Round Here Reads Tolstoy on 10:10 - Feb 4 with 1444 views | DorkingDale |
Just heard Robert Elms say that it's being featured on his show on BBC Radio London this morning. | | | |
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