Dear Reader by Cathy Rentzenbrink

Published by Picador on 17th September

Available from All Good Bookshops and Online

What They Say

For as long as she can remember, Cathy Rentzenbrink has lost and found herself in stories. Growing up she was rarely seen without her nose in a book and read in secret long after lights out. When tragedy struck, books kept her afloat. Eventually they lit the way to a new path, first as a bookseller and then as a writer. No matter what the future holds, reading will always help.

Dear Reader is a moving, funny and joyous exploration of how books can change the course of your life, packed with recommendations from one reader to another.

What I Say

“And I know that whatever else may happen in my life, I will love talking to strangers about books. Once upon a time there was a little girl who loved books. She still does. She always will.”

I was going to do a video review for Dear Reader – you know me, there’s nothing better I like than having an opportunity to talk about books I adore to an audience – no matter how few people are watching! To be honest, I realised that two minutes twenty seconds of a Twitter video isn’t long enough to tell you why I loved Dear Reader.

Life at the moment doesn’t really lend itself to me shouting about books on Twitter and Instagram. Personal circumstances have meant that books and blogging have had to take a total back seat whilst I concentrate on looking after my family. Just between us, not having to do it has felt like a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders too.

I wanted to tell you that because that’s why I needed to take a break from book blogging and social media. Suddenly shouting about books and retweeting things didn’t seem that important. I’ve still been scrolling through Twitter and Instagram don’t get me wrong, but it’s been a strange experience. It’s as if you are standing outside the school playground when you can still see everything going on through the fence – who is playing nicely together, who is shouting the most, or the loudest, and who is picking on who – I just decided not to step through the gate for a bit.

I posted the blog posts I had promised, as well as pictures of the books that had arrived (thank you so much to everyone who sent me something) but for the last two weeks I have been existing in some kind of bookish limbo – aware of my commitments to people, but having absolutely no desire to pick up a book and read anything.

When the fabulous Camilla Elworthy at Picador very kindly sent me a copy of Cathy’s book a while back, I put it on my shelf to read later because I didn’t feel like I needed it. The past fortnight has been one of huge ups and downs, and on Saturday, feeling slightly overwhelmed and a little concerned by my complete and total lack of bookish enthusiasm, I pulled it down from my shelves and started reading.

The thing is, I couldn’t stop.

Dear Reader made me laugh, made me cry (a lot!), and also made me nod furiously as I read it. I was reading about myself in these pages. Finally someone had totally articulated the pure unadulterated joy of books and reading, and I loved every single page.

I remember the numerous times I have put off doing something so I can squeeze in another chapter, the sheer delight of choosing a book and curling up with it uninterrupted, and the quizzical looks from someone who just doesn’t understand the joy that reading brings. All of this is in Cathy’s book – I said in a comment on Instagram to Cathy that I had never felt so seen!

Cathy intersperses chapters from her own personal life – how she started reading, her career as a bookseller at Waterstones and then working for Quick Reads before becoming a writer, with almost prescriptions for us, books on different topics and themes, to help and educate, to reignite the reading passion we may have lost.

The most poignant part of the book for me is when Cathy talks about her grief in losing her brother Matty. I read Cathy’s memoir The Last Act of Love when it was published, and apart from openly sobbing at some points, I remember feeling her pain and loss so acutely, and was in awe of the all encompassing love she felt for Matty and how she described the feelings of grief so perfectly.

When my Mum passed away last year, I turned to reading as I talked about here – it became the cure to the uncharted heartbreak I was drowning in. Yet this time things are different. I feel overwhelmed by the world beyond my living room, and can’t really connect with anything. As I sit writing this, to my right are my bookshelves, groaning with so many unread books to read that it’s ridiculous – and yet I still ordered two more yesterday. That’s the thing that Cathy understands so well – that the way we feel about books is in our subconscious, and however unlikely it seems, it is always there whatever life may throw at us.

Dear Reader really made me stop and think about my whole approach to reading. In saying this, I am probably ending any chance of ever being sent a proof again, but here’s the thing. Why as a reader and blogger have I become so hung up on having the latest releases to shout about? When I started blogging I simply read what I fancied and talked about it, but as I have told you before, I have noticed recently how having the latest releases it is seemingly all that matters and honestly, I am weary of it.

Cathy’s book gave me the breathing space I needed. She made me realise that reading is not a race, that there is nothing wrong with simply stepping back and looking at the books I already have, rather than being desperate to have the books everyone is telling me I need to be a contented reader. It was as if the answer to my literary dilemmas had been sitting in this book all the time, and now I finally understand it.

Dear Reader is absolutely the book I wish I had had when I was younger. As a teenager I was frequently teased about my love of books and reading. People just didn’t seem to understand my need to have books, the delight in searching other people’s bookshelves, the satisfaction in working my way round the library from children’s fiction to the tantalising moment when I started reading adult fiction. I was lucky in that both my parents read avidly, and when my mum passed away, the only thing I really wanted of hers were the books on her bookshelf, still with the bookmarks in, even though forensic science and social workers memoirs were never my kind of read!

Books give me that emotional connection, an unspoken link with someone else, and a shared memory that can never be forgotten. They are a way for me to start a conversation, to escape from my world for a little while and to learn about new ones, and for me nothing feels better than finding a novel you want to tell everyone they need to read.

Quite simply, books and reading bring me joy, and Dear Reader is an unapologetically glorious love letter to both. I would go as far to say that it is required reading for anyone who has ever felt that they are alone in their love of books. Dear Reader will help you see that in fact that there are numerous people who feel exactly the same way as you do – and it’s a revelation!

It is a book that not only reignited my passion for reading, and added a lot of books to my reading list, but in reading Cathy’s story it made me feel that like her, I will carry on talking to people about books for as long as I can, and reminded me that little girl who loved reading is always there too.

Thank you so much to Camilla Elworthy for my gifted copy.