#21 • Mark Hodkinson • Author of No One Round Her Reads Tolstoy

<p>This week, I’ve hooked up with <strong>Mark Hodkinson</strong> - author of one of my favourite books of the year, titled <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Round-Here-Reads-Tolstoy-Working-Class/dp/1786899973/ref=asc_df_1786899973/?tag=googshopuk-21&linkCode=df0&hvadid=570409167989&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=6612372397459939578&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=1006933&hvtargid=pla-1566855365698&psc=1&th=1&psc=1" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow"><strong>No One Round Here Reads Tolstoy</strong></a> (there’s an amazon link right there) - to be honest it was hard to resist. There are so many talking points, we probably could have gone on holiday together for a week and still not covered everything I wanted to dig around in. </p> <p>As you’ll come to see, the main drag of the book is that of a working class man who somewhat unwittingly collected thousands of books throughout the course of his life, but more than that, it’s the story of how he got there when nobody in his family read - which for want of a better mirror to hold up, is a marked difference from my life.</p> <p>Digging into some highlights, we mostly talk books and music (natch), growing up in the north across the 70s and 80s, name-checking many of the greats along the way: Salinger, Bukowski, Henry Rollins, Sillitoe and er… Catherine Cookson for some reason (hey, it might be good for the algorithms - I don’t recall ever seeing a podcast that mentions her) before diving a little into what it takes to publish a book and some of the differences between going it alone and having a publisher drive the car. We even get to touch on lofty subjects such as whether there even <em>is</em> a class system anymore. </p> <p>You can find Mark’s homepage <a href="http://www.markhodkinson.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow"><strong>here</strong></a> where you can find his books and links to other projects. He also does <a href="http://www.pomonapr.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow"><stron