Oh my goodness I loved this book. I didn’t want to ever finish it.

My Mum read it not so long ago and talked my ears off about it. We don’t normally read the same books. In fact, although we both love reading, we couldn’t be more different in the books we pick up.

So when she bought me this one, having enjoyed it herself so much, I was sceptical. I had a stack of other books planned for reading next but out of politeness for the gift I thought I better read it first.

But I was in heaven reading The Reading Cure. It is a truly beautiful book. It isn’t a book about Anorexia, it is a book about how books and food bring comfort, companionship and warmth to the soul. It is how books open our world and challenge us in the most unexpected ways. It is about encouragement in our darkest hours and it is about wonder.
The book made me gasp, cry, laugh, rush to the book shop, pick beloved books off my shelf and flick through the pages again. It made me desperately want to make a ‘haystack of toast’ and cocoa. It made me dream of sitting in the Mediterranean sunshine eating fresh ‘bread and stew warmed to idiocy by wine in a mountain tavern’
It made me order every Virginia Woolf book I haven’t got and start on her diaries…
Basically I can not recommend this book enough.. it has given me a ‘marvellous hunger, a voluptuous hunger, a swooning, insatiate, invincible hunger.’ For reading and food.
My mum is a truly brilliant and intrepid cook… and now I can add this book to Dickens and My Family and Other Animals as the only books we totally agree on.