Charlie Kaufman's Adaptation proved you could write a great screenplay about writing a screenplay, and Taylor Swift had a hit with a song about a song. But is it any fun to read about reading? It's undeniable that Susan Hill's Howards End Is on the Landing doesn't have the thrills of some of the zanier books riding the "annualist" trend, called things like "My Year Grappling Pythons in the Amazon", but it has its own quiet charm.

The memoir starts with Hill hunting for a classic in her house and, in the process, discovering hundreds of other works she had never read. "I wanted to repossess my books," she writes, "to explore what I had accumulated over a lifetime of reading."

There's a fair bit of meandering as she documents what is on her shelves and uses it as a chance to reminisce, but Hill's style is vivid and measured and the book is both a passionate reminder of the importance of reading and a revealing glimpse of a writer's life.

In her long career as a novelist, Hill has rubbed shoulders with lots of literary heavyweights. "Oh good, here's Possum!" she overhears as a young writer entering a party alongside an elderly TS Eliot. Roald Dahl comes across as a cantankerous grump, Edith Sitwell is described as "Queen Elizabeth the First reincarnated" and Ian Fleming makes a suave cameo, leaning against a mantelpiece with a cigarette holder in one hand and a cocktail beside him, all "high cheekbones" and "high style".

It's all enjoyable enough, but by the end of Hill's book, you're eager to throw it aside and start tackling all the works of genius she talks about. Reading about reading may not be as satisfying as reading about everything else, but it's a useful prod in the right direction.