Reading the room.

That reading fiction can be a transformative experience is clear from the case of Taylor's own mother Ida, born in 1916 in a working-class Lancashire family. "Women are list-makers and social secretaries par excellence", Taylor writes at one point; hence the proliferation of women's book groups. In asking why women read fiction, Taylor's book makes a start: but there are deeper, bolder questions still to be asked. [Extracted from the article]

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