DEEP in the heart of the countryside on the borders of Devon and Cornwall, up hill and down dale, then up again, from the comfortable purpose-built library attached to her cosy, hidden cottage, DoveGreyReader transmits her scribblings to the nation and beyond, writes Jackie Butler.

At midnight her musings for the day are uploaded into the ether of the worldwide web and by the next morning blog devotees from as far afield as Sydney and New York will have posted their comments or offered their own suggestions for her reading pleasure.

As one of the most popular book bloggers on the planet, her choice of titles to explore and her comments on them can have a major effect on their sales, whether they are newly published or revived from the past. Her library holds some 6,000 books – "it doesn't feel like a lot" she says – but the numbers are constantly growing and each new volume causes excitement in varying degree, depending on her mood and expectation.

But this is no power-crazed intellectual with a desire for fame or glory. DoveGreyReader is the very charming, chatty and totally down to earth Lynne Hatwell, who describes herself as "a Devonshire-based bookaholic, sock-knitting quilter who used to be a community nurse in her spare time".

She makes no money from her global enterprise, although publishers, and a growing number of authors, are now rather keen to deposit bundles of free books on her doorstep – a challenge for the postie charged with delivering to her family's tucked-away retreat on the outskirts of Milton Abbot.

But she is not a woman to be swayed, and her selections remain eclectic and often random, sometimes following a theme, like Remembrance Day, and sometimes tackling an area she has no affinity with or previous knowledge of.

Her choices encompass fiction of all kinds from around the world; biographies, histories, comedies, travelogues, poetry or plays – all turn up on the Dovegreyreader web page.

"The blog is about making books interesting and accessible. I hate elitism and academia and the higher ground that some people assume," Lynne says with visible disdain.

"Everyone can interpret the same piece of writing differently and every interpretation is valid. One thing I will never do is say a book is rubbish. If people enjoy it, then it is a valid reading experience. I am not a literary critic and I don't want an author jumping off a viaduct because I've trashed his book.

"So I decided to write about books I really love – ones I felt I could really recommend to other people. Gradually I have developed a voice, and that voice is genuinely me."

After years of semi-anonymity she now feels more comfortable about emerging from the shadows after retiring from a long career as a health visitor in and around the Tavistock area.

The blog – carefully crafted each day and loaded with images of book jackets, plus snapshots of Lynne's craftwork, her pets and, increasingly, her excursions – is no whimsical occupation. To broaden her already wide literary horizons, Lynne invested some £3,000 in buying new books in its first year in a sincere, and greatly enjoyable, bid to enrich her collection.

The popularity of her online presence initially took the unassuming mother of three by surprise, but she has learned to embrace and appreciate the doors it has opened and the potential it represents – not to mention the wealth of new relationships forged.

She now receives invitations to participate in literary festivals like Dartington's Ways With Words and counts top authors like Susan Hill as friends. There is also the opening to develop her own writing.

"I started writing it anonymously and was quite low key about it because of my work, but gradually people started to find out it was me," she says. "Now I am putting more of myself into it."

The blog – which does include slices of everyday country life – has a mixture of origins. As a voracious reader she has kept a log of everything she has read since 1988 and written notes on each one for her own reference.

"I'm not a book borrower; I am a book owner," she declares, confessing to what some may consider the dreadful sin of writing personal pencil notes in the front of her books.

This habit developed into the blog idea when she fell ill with a nasty virus almost three years ago and ended up having to take six months off work.

"One of the joys of working in a doctor's surgery is that you can pick up horrible bugs and this one developed into neuritis, affecting my arms and neck," Lynne explains. "I was in pain and on lots of tablets, but one thing I could do was read." She started with War and Peace, then the whole Margaret Atwood collection.

"I started to think that I would really like to write about the books, but where?" she says. "I started looking at book blogs on the Internet."

At first she thought they were all about bragging and boasting, but then decided to take the plunge and typed kneeling at her laptop because it was the only angle that was comfortable.

"You think you are modest and self-effacing and then suddenly millions of people can read what you are writing instantly," she says. "It's an odd feeling. The first day I was delighted to find that 20 people had read my blog. I later found out it was my dad – 20 times!"

The blog is now read by around 1,000 people a day, with 500 of those having it delivered direct by e-mail to their inboxes.

Another key factor in the blog's history stems back to Lynne's decision to fulfil some unfinished business a few years ago.

As middle age approached, she and her husband Dave – "a brilliant artist and designer" – set each other the challenge of attacking long-held personal ambitions before their 50th birthdays.

Dave's was to learn to play the piano; Lynne's was to complete an Open University degree in English literature. This, of course, involved writing in more depth about books.

"I wanted to do something completely different from the nursing and clinical side and I absolutely loved it; I was in clover," Lynne says.

With work and family to juggle, she did have to do most of her essays at two in the morning, but missing a couple of hours' sleep was a sacrifice she was more than willing to make.

"It was about understanding what you are reading in a different way. I felt I was missing a lot in the books I read and the degree pointed the way to a different level," she says.

English literature was a subject she would have loved to take further when she first left school, but her mother was desperate for her to have a profession that would allow her to support herself, and children's nursing seemed equally appealing.

She feels privileged to have trained at Great Ormond Street in London – although these days, she says, she would probably have studied medicine and become a doctor, but at the time sexual equality in the workplace was slow moving.

The two occupations – writer and nurse – seem diverse and disconnected, but sitting on one of the squashy leather sofas in her book-lined haven talking to Lynne, it soon becomes clear that each has enhanced and enriched the other in a unique way over the years.

What Dovegreyreader's online friends share in her warm, honest blog is the sum of everything that has brought her to this point in her life.

"I realised that a lifetime of listening to people's stories as a health visitor has underpinned the way I read books," she muses.

She was born in Exeter in Coronation year when her father Len Chester (who recently published a short memoir of his days as a teenage bugle boy) was a Royal Marine stationed at Lympstone. But he was soon moved to Surrey and the young Lynne went to school in the suburban town of Cheam.

Neither of her parents had enjoyed what they called "an education" and were determined that Lynne and her older brother should seize every opportunity to learn.

"My father was mad keen for us to read, read, read," she recalls. Lynne took the advice to heart and when she was barely halfway through primary school the teacher sent a letter home asking her parents to stop her reading because she had already polished off every title on the official reading programme.

"They said that if I continued reading as much I would become an 'empty shell'. I'm not sure how that could make sense," Lynne says indignantly.

She, of course, did not curb her habit. Instead she would devour books by authors like Enid Blyton and Malcolm Saville from the local public library.

"I would get four books on a Saturday and I would have read them all by Sunday. Then I'd have almost a whole week to wait for some more."

Additional entertainment came from Judy and Bunty comics or Look and Learn magazine, but books remained the top choice throughout her childhood and into her teenage years.

Sadly, one of the most significant events in Lynne's life was the loss of her only brother when she was 23 and he just a couple of years older. It has coloured her philosophy ever since – one that advocates seizing the day and going for your dreams

"He was diagnosed with leukaemia when I was 21 and he was just married," says Lynne. "Coming through that experience was the foundation of me. I met my husband Dave about six weeks before my brother's death and we settled on that philosophy together and are still pursuing it after 32 years."

The couple made a fresh start in Plymouth after their marriage, with nurse Lynne moving into health visiting. As part of her training she had to work in a rural area, and was dispatched to Tavistock. A full-time job working with new mothers and children came up in the area in 1978, and there Lynne remained, attached to various surgeries in the area, until her retirement at the end of October.

There were, of course, breaks for the births of her and Dave's own offspring – Laura in 1981, Tom in 1983 and Robin in 1985.

"Three babies in four years was quite a challenge," she says. "By the time Robin was three I felt my brain had turned to mush and I needed to do some more reading. I negotiated with Dave that the child allowance would be my book allowance."

She is quick to praise the constant encouragement of her husband, who used to have his own furniture business in Tavistock.

"He has supported me so much," she says. "He is an absolutely brilliant back-up team, he's done the shopping and the cooking, and he even built this room for me. I couldn't have done any of this without him."

Incredibly she still finds time for a host of other activities – plenty of walks in the countryside, family outings and watching TV, while accomplishing the aforementioned quilting and sock knitting.

But there's always a book to hand – one of the six she is usually in the midst of reading at any given time. She's even started a very laid-back regular book club at the nearby Hotel Endsleigh.

"I've learnt to grab every opportunity," she smiles. "If you've got a spare five minutes you can use it to read."

Visit Lynne Hatwell's book blog at www.dovegreyreader.typepad.com