Mark Mason’s book Mail Obsession is one of those travel books which explore our country’s history and traditions in a different way – I have read quite a few of these. In this book the author explores our postcode system and aims to provide a piece of trivia for each of the 124 postcode areas in the UK. He also explores some of the history and quirkiness of the postal system and travels to a number of those areas in a series of journeys. A retained receipt inside the book shows that I bought it at Oxfam in Keswick last April, although a pencilled price inside the cover shows that it had been sold secondhand before that.
I confess that I have never thought much about postcodes before, and was interested to see how old this type of system is. I found the information about how they were created and how they are used to be the best bit of this book, along with other postal related facts. The 124 pieces of trivia, however, are not related to the postcodes so this book is filled with historical and cultural titbits which don’t link with each other in any way.
The journeys that the author makes take him through many of the postcode areas, including some quite isolated ones, but they don’t cover all of them, so he includes those in other places in the text. The ones which are visited and those which are not seem to be quite random. The trivia includes information about names, traditions, notable people, history, and often references to popular culture. The author does give a context to many of them and also discusses the trivia that he doesn’t use.
I found this book a bit shapeless and maybe a little pointless. I am obviously not going to remember all this trivia, although it may have sparked my interest when I first read it, so it felt like the book was one which grabs your attention when reading it but soon fades from the memory. I certainly didn’t hate it, but I think that I might avoid similar books in future. This one is moving on to Oxfam in Holmfirth as it is a hardback copy in excellent condition.
Anne Is Reading 