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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorThe Child that Books Built
Francis Spufford · 219 pages
"To understand the thrall of fiction, Spufford goes back to his earliest encounters with books, exploring such beloved classics as The Wind in the Willows, The Little House on the Prairie, and the Narnia chronicles. He re-creates the excitement of discovery, writing joyfully of the moment when fuzzy marks on a page become words, which then reveal - a dragon. Weaving together child development, pe
The Whole Five Feet: What the Great Books Taught Me About Life, Death, and Pretty Much Everything Else
Christopher R. Beha · 258 pages
Recounts how the author set out to read all of the Harvard Classics in an effort to get his life back on track after a serious illness and to discover how the great writers of the past grappled with essential questions of existence.
How To Be a Heroine
Samantha Ellis · 272 pages
With Borges
Alberto Manguel · 91 pages
"In Buenos Aires, 1964, a blind writer approaches a sixteen-year-old bookstore clerk asking him if he would be interested in a part-time job reading aloud. "The writer was Jorge Luis Borges, one of the world's finest literary minds; the boy was Alberto Manguel, who was later to become an internationally acclaimed author and bibliophile. "The young Manguel spent several years reading aloud an
Howards End Is on the Landing: A Year of Reading from Home
Susan Hill · 236 pages
Early one autumn afternoon in pursuit of an elusive book on her shelves, Susan Hill encountered dozens of others that she had never read, or forgotten she owned, or wanted to read for a second time. The discovery inspired her to embark on a year-long voyage through her books, forsaking new purchases in order to get to know her own collection again. A book which is left on a shelf for a decade i
Negotiating with the Dead
Margaret Atwood · 219 pages
What is the role of the Writer? Prophet? High Priest of Art? Court Jester? Or witness to the real world? Looking back on her own childhood and writing career, Margaret Atwood examines the metaphors which writers of fiction and poetry have used to explain--or excuse!--their activities, looking at what costumes they have assumed, what roles they have chosen to play. In her final chapter she takes up
The Possessed: Adventures With Russian Books and the People Who Read Them
Elif Batuman · 297 pages
Literally and metaphorically following the footsteps of her favorite authors, Batuman searches for the answers to the big questions in the details of lived experience, combining fresh readings of the great Russians, from Pushkin to Platonov, with the sad and funny stories of the lives they continue to influence--including her own.
Ruined By Reading: A Life in Books
Lynne Sharon Schwartz · 123 pages
Schwartz, an author, offers insight into why we read and how what we read shapes us.
Voracious: A Hungry Reader Cooks Her Way through Great Books
Cara Nicoletti · 283 pages
"As a young bookworm reading in her grandfather's butcher shop, Cara Nicoletti saw how books and food bring people to life. Now a butcher, cook, and talented writer, she serves up stories and recipes inspired by beloved books and the food that gives their characters depth and personality. From the breakfast sausage in Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House in the Big Woods to chocolate cupcakes with
Maps and Legends: Reading and Writing Along the Borderlands
Michael Chabon · 222 pages
A series of linked essays in praise of reading and writing, with subjects running from ghost stories to comic books, Sherlock Holmes to Cormac McCarthy. Throughout, Chabon energetically argues for a return to the thrilling, chilling origins of storytelling, rejecting the false walls around "serious" literature in favor of a wide-ranging affection.
My Reading Life
Pat Conroy · 331 pages
Bestselling author Pat Conroy acknowledges the books that have shaped him and celebrates the profound effect reading has had on his life.
Reading Lolita in Tehran
Azar Nafisi · 368 pages
Every Thursday morning for two years in the Islamic Republic of Iran, Azar Nafisi, a bold and inspired teacher, secretly gathered seven of her most committed female students to read forbidden Western classics. Some came from conservative and religious families, others were progressive and secular; some had spent time in jail. They were shy and uncomfortable at first, unaccustomed to being asked to
So Many Books, So Little Time: A Year of Passionate Reading
Sara Nelson · 242 pages
The interplay between our lives and our books is the subject of this unique memoir by publishing correspondent and self-described "readaholic" Sara Nelson. From Solzhenitsyn to Laura Zigman, Catherine M. to Captain Underpants, the result is a personal chronicle of insight, wit, and infectious enthusiasm. Nelson writes, "Explaining the moment of connection between a reader and a book to someone who
The Maximum Security Book Club: Reading Literature in a Men's Prison
Mikita Brottman · 230 pages
"A riveting account of the two years literary scholar Mikita Brottman spent reading literature with criminals in a maximum-security men's prison outside Baltimore, and what she learned from them--Orange Is the New Black meets Reading Lolita in Tehran. On sabbatical from teaching literature to undergraduates, and wanting to educate a different kind of student, Mikita Brottman starts a book club wit
The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia
Laura Miller · 311 pages
THE MAGICIAN'S BOOK is the story of one reader's long, tumultuous relationship with C.S. Lewis'The Chronicles of Narnia. Enchanted by its fantastic world as a child, prominent critic Laura Miller returns to the series as an adult to uncover the source of these small books' mysterious power by looking at their creator, Clive Staples Lewis. What she discovers is not the familiar, idealized image of
Great Books: My Adventures with Homer, Rousseau, Woolf, and Other Indestructible Writers of the Western World
David Denby · 493 pages
In Great Books, Denby lives the common adult fantasy of returning to school with some worldly knowledge and experience of life. A gifted story-teller, he leads us on a glorious tour - by turns eloquent, witty, and moving - through the works themselves and through his experiences as a middle-aged man among freshmen. He recounts his failures and triumphs as a reader and student (taking an exam led t
A Jane Austen Education: How Six Novels Taught Me About Love, Friendship, and the Things That Really Matter
William Deresiewicz · 255 pages
Austen scholar Deresiewicz turns to the author's novels to reveal the remarkable life lessons hidden within. With humor and candor, Deresiewicz employs his own experiences to demonstrate the enduring power of Austen's teachings.
One for the Books
Joe Queenan · 244 pages
One of America's leading humorists seriously examines his own obsession with books. Joe Queenan became a voracious reader as a means of escape from a joyless childhood in a Philadelphia housing project. In the years since then he has dedicated himself to an assortment of idiosyncratic reading challenges: spending a year reading only short books, spending a year reading books he always suspected he
My Life with Bob: Flawed Heroine Keeps Book of Books, Plot Ensues
Pamela Paul · 256 pages
"Imagine keeping a record of every book you ever read. What would those titles say about you? With humor and warmth, the editor of The New York Times Book Review shares the stories that have shaped her life. For twenty-eight years, Pamela Paul has been keeping a diary that records the books she reads, rather than the life she leads. Or does it? Over time, it's become clear that this Book of Books,
Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader
Anne Fadiman · 144 pages
In these eighteen essays, Anne Fadiman "recounts a lifelong love affair with books and language."--Jacket. Ex Libris recounts a lifelong love affair with books and language. For Fadiman, as for many passionate readers, the books she loves have become chapters in her own life story. Writing with remarkable grace, she revives the tradition of the well-crafted personal essay, moving easily from an
Shakespeare and Company
Sylvia Beach · 230 pages
Sylvia Beach was intimately acquainted with the expatriate and visiting writers of the Lost Generation, a label that she never accepted. Like moths of great promise, they were drawn to her well-lighted bookstore and warm hearth on the Left Bank. Shakespeare and Company evokes the zeitgeist of an era through its revealing glimpses of James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald, Sherwood Anderso
The Year of Reading Dangerously: How Fifty Great Books (and Two Not-So-Great Ones) Saved My Life
Andy Miller · 338 pages
"An editor and writer's vivaciously entertaining, and often moving, chronicle of his year-long adventure with fifty great books (and two not-so-great ones)-- a true story about reading that reminds us why we should all make time in our lives for books. Nearing his fortieth birthday, author and critic Andy Miller realized he's not nearly as well read as he'd like to be. A devout book lover who some
Shelf Discovery: The Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading
Lizzie Skurnick, Laura Lippman, Meg Cabot, Jennifer Weiner, Cecily von Ziegesan
Remember that book you read at that time in your life when everything seemed to be going crazy—the one book that brought the world into focus and helped soothe your raging teenage angst?