“I found the book I was looking for in the end, but by then it had become far more than a book. It marked the start of a journey through my own library.” (Quotation page 1)

Theme and Content

It was an early autumn afternoon, when Susan Hill’s travel through the shelves begins. She was looking for this one book and found many others, long forgotten or never read.

Therefore, she makes the decision to begin a special reading year, reading just books from her shelves, without buying new ones. During this reading year, the author would also shorten the internet hours. It was not a kind of resolution or mission for her, just a personal decision to re-explore read and unread books in her house, although she soon finds out, that there are books for much longer than one year.

Plot and Writing

This book is a kind of diary, a story about Susan Hill’s life as reader, as author of fiction and non-fiction, and her own publishing company, Long Barn Books. She shares with us her memories about her childhood and youth in Scarborough and about the related books she still loves and keeps on her shelves, together with the newer children books that her daughters loved when they were children. There are memories of interesting BBC interviews for “Bookshelf” and of enriching conversations with other well-known authors. One chapter is about writing fiction and she remembers: “Writing fiction was not regarded as something you did as a set task at a set time every day, let alone with a regular target of words. Those who saw things this way had never, of course, tried either and certainly never had to work to a deadline, let alone earn a living by writing.” (Quotation page 184). While sharing her stories and memories with us, she takes books out of the different shelves to find forty books for this reading year, finally sharing her list of the “Final Forty” with us. “I am taking out far too many books. I need at least another year of reading from home. But now I have reached the landing and here it is. Howard’s End.” (Quotation page 234)

Conclusion

Howards End is on the Landing is a book about a lifetime of reading and writing, an interesting, enjoyable read for passionate readers where one will find inspiring titles not yet read but could also, like me, feel confirmed to do the same, start a year of reading through your own shelves of still unread books.