Portrait of a Mother Reader - Catherine, UK

Reading habits, rhythms and book recommendations of Mother Readers the world over

I’m

Catherine Oliver

, currently home educating my two children in London, UK. They’re 6 and 8. I don’t work for pay, but I do write the Substack newsletter How We Homeschool. My husband is here too, and we often read side by side, but rarely the same books.

Who inspired you to become the reader you are today?

I’ve been a keen reader for as long as I can remember. My dad always had a book on the go, and I particularly remember that my mother was very respectful of my reading— if I had a few pages to go to the end of a book she made sure I was left alone to savour it. My husband is a big reader and certainly encourages me by example. 

Who are your favourite authors?

As an adult, in recent years, probably Dickens. Mark Twain. Willa Cather. I’ll read anything by Curtis Sittenfeld. I don’t remember my childhood reading very clearly, alas. For my children I keep a reading record of the books they’ve read, which I hope will mean they have a better memory of these reading years. 

Who do you discuss books with?

I don’t especially like discussing books. With fiction, I let myself become completely absorbed by the world of the story, and I don’t want to hear other people’s opinions or critical responses! With non-fiction, I often talk ‘around’ the subject with my husband.

What are you currently reading?

As it’s taken me a while to complete these questions, I have three different answers to this. Initially, I was reading 1776: America and Britain at War by David McCullough. For the past few years I’ve been learning about American history (and reading American literature) and I just can’t get enough. Then I read Hampton Sides’ The Wide Wide Sea: The Final, Fatal Adventure of Captain James Cook, which coincidentally begins in 1776. I don’t normally read maritime history/exploration books but I loved this one and highly recommend it. Once I finished that I moved on to Days at The Morisaki Bookshop, by Satoshi Yagisawa. I think this is my first Japanese novel. It’s slim and charming (so far!).

What’s in your TBR pile?

Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men which I’ve never read (more America reading, but also I just noticed it on the shelf when I put back Muriel Spark’s The Girls of Slender Means, and thought it was a very slim book that I haven’t read and ought to. If you can’t tell, I like a slim book. I alphabetised my husband’s fiction shelves so when I read from his shelves it’s often on an alphabetical theme! I don’t have much of a TBR pile. It gets overwhelming and once a book has sat out for a while I lose the urge to read it. I do, however, have a long list of books I want to read as soon as I can get my hands on them, of which more later.

What have you read so far this year that you would recommend?

I’ve read 21 books so far this year. Looking back through my list I have loved: 

• Bleak House and David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

• True Grit by Charles Portis

• My Àntonia by Willa Cather (I adored this book)

• The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan-Doyle 

• Hatchet by Gary Paulsen

• Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

What are your favourite genres?

I increasingly enjoy the classics. When I read a so-so modern book I think regretfully that I could have read a brilliant nineteenth century classic instead and that I’ll never get that time back. I read a lot of history, in phases. I like fiction by and about women.

Persephone is a good source for older fiction. I loved One Fine Day by Mollie Panter-Downes, Invitation to the Waltz by Rosamond Lehmann, Miss Buncle’s Book by D.E. Stevenson and Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor. Newer examples are Brother of the More Famous Jack by Barbara Trapido (1982) and Make Lemonade by Virginia Euwer Wolff (1993).

I have a niche interest in old housekeeping books, which is ironic given the state of my house:

• The I Hate to Housekeep Book by Peg Bracken

• How to Run Your Home Without Help by Kay Smallshaw

• Orchids on your Budget by Marjorie Hillis

I like science but I find it hard to retain the detail amidst the tiredness and frequent interruptions of family life. I like short stories. Tobias Wolff’s ‘Bullet in the Brain’ from The Night in Question has stayed with me for years. 

What were your favourite books you read in 2023?

• The Ruin of All Witches by Malcolm Gaskill

• All the Wolves of Willoughby Chase books by Joan Aiken (children’s books but I inhaled them) 

• The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro 

• A Black Boy at Eton by Dillibe Onyeama 

• Black and British by David Olusoga 

• John Adams by David McCullough

• Middlemarch by George Eliot

• Lincoln by Jan Morris

What are you most looking forward to reading in 2024?

I am wildly excited about Amor Towles’ collection of short stories (which is published the day that I’m typing this, hurray!). I’m waiting for Percival Everett’s book James to be ready for me at the library. The Pirate King by Sean Kingsley, (‘The Strange Adventures of Henry Avery and the Birth of the Golden Age of Piracy’—maybe I am about to become a maritime history obsessive). The Heart in Winter by Kevin Barry—more America reading but with an Irish twist. A few years ago I really enjoyed Barry’s collection of short stories, Dark Lies the Island. Oh also Kendra Adachi’s The Plan, coming out in October, which I will add to my housekeeping books and hope will revolutionise my life. 

Do you read books more than once?

My memory’s not great, and I have been known to reread an entire book without realising it was a reread until the end! It was Saplings by Noel Streatfeild, which is so good it merits an intentional reread. I often want to reread a book as I’m reading it the first time, but I very rarely do—there are too many other books I want to read. I’m a greedy reader.

What have been your most treasured read alouds and why?

Reading the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder was very special because the children loved them so much. They would listen for hours at a time until I was literally hoarse. Animals of Farthing Wood by Colin Dann, The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett, and Tom’s Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce were other very popular ones. When I used to read them a bedtime story I especially enjoyed Shirley Hughes books. I also read them the whole of Rosemary Sutcliffe’s Black Ships Before Troy, which they were really too young for but they adored it. Now, though, they have no memory of it at all, which is karma because my mother read me The Secret Garden, and I have no memory of that. 

Shirley Hughes illustration

What do you use as bookmarks?

Receipts, playing cards, instruction leaflets, envelopes, shopping lists. We do own a few bookmarks with beautiful paintings by Emily Patrick, and those are my favourites. But mostly it’s whatever’s to hand. 

Artwork by Emily Patrick

What books have shaped the person and mother you have become?

I don’t know how much books have shaped me, as a person and mother. I’m not sure I’m introspective enough to give them the chance. That makes me sound like an awful Englishwoman, trudging onwards in her wellies while literature’s arrows bounce off her anorak. I read as an escape, and as something for my brain to work at outside family life. Books generally make me a much nicer, kinder person, but I’m not sure specific books have shaped me in specific ways. 

What is your favourite book of all time ever?

That’s an impossible question! I’ve dutifully looked through all my books to try to answer it for you but I can’t pick just one. 

When do you read and for how long do you read for each day?

I often read in bed in the morning, for how long depends on the children. Sometimes half an hour or more if they’ll let me (when this happens it’s because they’ve also got good books and we all just want to read), sometimes just a few minutes. I take books on journeys and to the park when I remember, I sometimes read when the children have a bit of TV after lunch (but at that time I also feel I should be tidying up, washing up, replying to things on Substack, eating my own lunch etc), I often read in the evenings and I always read in bed before I go to sleep. Maybe an hour or more each day, more or less depending on what’s going on.

Do you read everyday or only on certain days of the week?

Every day. I think I’d get quite grumpy if I didn’t read each day.

Do you read multiple books or one at a time?

Normally one at a time. My brain can’t handle more than that. 

Do you read consistently or does your reading rhythm ebb and flow?

It does ebb and flow. I tend to read a lot in December and January. Long dark evenings, perhaps? Beyond that I’m fairly consistent, but I do sometimes hit a block where I can’t find a single book I want to read. When that happens I quite like reading National Geographic as what

Ruth Gaskovski

calls a ‘palate cleanser’. I subscribe, and it’s such a treat when a new magazine comes through the letter box.

Where do you love to read?

On the sofa or in bed. Especially in bed. In the summer I quite like reading outside, but the grass is never as comfy as it looks!

Where do you store your book collection?

Ugh. My books are precariously piled onto one shelf tall and we don’t have space for another one. There’s also usually a stack on my bedside table. 

Where do you source books from?

My whole family is incapable of walking past a second hand bookshop without walking in. With the children I go to several different libraries. Online I often use ebay or bookfinder. I use Amazon or a high street bookshop if there’s a new book that I just have to have right now. And my husband has thousands of books which I often use as my own personal library. 

Where do you get book recommendations from?

Sometimes my husband. I read The Week magazine and sometimes get new book recommendations there. For children’s books, I spend a lot of time researching good ones. I like this list from a London private school,

Jamey Fisher Perkins

is on the same history schedule as us and I like a lot of her book suggestions, and the lists in The Well-Trained Mind have a lot of good books. 

What formats do you read in?

Has to be a real book, on paper. I can’t concentrate on a screen (and I don’t want to spend any more time on a screen than necessary). I hate wearing headphones/ear phones and also find my mind wanders when I listen to an audio book so I’m not actually listening at all. This must be partly why we have so many books in the house!

How do you keep track of what you have read?

I keep a dated list in a notebook. Possibly I started that after rereading Saplings unwittingly! In the same book I note down words I want to look up and passages that I especially love (except I’m always too desperate to keep reading to do much of that.). 

How do you keep track of what you want to read?

I often put things in my Amazon basket which I use as an enormous digital TBR list, even though I will ultimately find many books second hand or in the library. I sometimes jot down a list but I often find reading one book leads me onto the next one, so a list planned in advance rarely comes to fruition. 

Why do you read?

My husband once said that everything we do is an excuse not to do something else, which haunts me. I’m sure I read partly to avoid doing the washing up. But I also read because it is entirely for me, entirely about what I want. I certainly get addicted to fiction and I read because I simply have to. I read because there are so many good books out there and so much knowledge to be gained about the world around us. I read because I’m a confirmed introvert, and books never try to talk to you. And I read to relax, to put my feet up, and have some peace and quiet after a day of often constant interaction with my children. 

Thank you for reading Catherine’s Mother Reader Portrait.

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