The first, ‘Master and Commander’ was a gift, the second ‘Post Captain’ I bought in a secondhand shop, the third ‘HMS Surprise’ I clicked-on in the middle of the night. The next day I went back to the secondhand bookshop and bought the next four books because by then I was totally hooked and I’d…

At a dangerous corner of the stairs, the cat got under my feet and I had to grab the bannister. Most of the books I was carrying, I dropped. Only one was within reach when I sank down on the stairs to recover my balance. It was Marina Lewycka’s ‘A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian’ and…