I loved those books, and still do; as a child I read them for the sheer pleasure of finding things out. With these main volumes came a smaller, more colourful set of children’s reference books, which I also loved. When I was eight – so, shortly after these encyclopaedias became part of our family – I read a book called Elidor by Alan Garner. First attemptMy first attempt at writing a book of my own, unsurprisingly, was a predictable mishmash of fantasy tropes, a clumsy pastiche of Enid Blyton, LM Montgomery and Tolkien. Without my parents’ generous gift of the encyclopaedias which entranced me, and my thoughtful cousin who passed on an old, much-loved book, who knows what shape my reading and writing life would have taken.

Source: The Irish Times January 31, 2018 05:37 UTC