🧲 Books like this
The Unknown Unknown: Bookshops and the Delight of Not Getting What You Wanted
Mark Forsyth · back to the book
What’s in it
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorThe 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.
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
The Heroine's Bookshelf: Life Lessons, from Jane Austen to Laura Ingalls Wilder
Erin Blakemore · 224 pages
In this compelling book of beloved heroines and the remarkable writers who created them, Erin Blakemore explores how the pluck and dignity of literary characters such as Anne Shirley, Elizabeth Bennet, Jane Eyre, Scarlett O'Hara, Scout Finch and Jo March can inspire women today.
Books for Living: Some Thoughts on Reading, Reflecting, and Embracing Life
Will Schwalbe · 342 pages
From the author of the international bestseller The End of Your Life Book Club , an inspiring and magical exploration of the enduring power of books - a must for all passionate book lovers, exploring books as diverse as The Girl on the Train , The Little Prince and David Copperfield . 'I've always believed that everything you need to know can be found in a book.' Will Schwalbe Why is it that we re
Stop What You're Doing and Read This!
Carmen Callil, Mark Haddon, Michael Rosen, Zadie Smith, Jeanette Winterson, Blake Morrison, Maryanne Wolf, Tim Parks, Jane Davis, Nicholas Carr · 192 pages
Footnotes from the World's Greatest Bookstores: True Tales and Lost Moments from Book Buyers, Booksellers, and Book Lovers
Bob Eckstein · 176 pages
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.
Rereadings: Seventeen Writers Revisit Books They Love
Anne Fadiman · 272 pages
Biblioholism: The Literary Addiction
Tom Raabe · 192 pages
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.
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
The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books
Azar Nafisi · 338 pages
The best-selling author of Reading Lolita in Tehran presents an impassioned tribute to the importance of fiction to democracy that blends memoir with close readings of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Babbitt and The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. "A passionate hymn to the power of fiction to change people's lives, by the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Reading Lolita in Tehran. Ten years a
What Makes This Book So Great
Jo Walton · 446 pages
"As any reader of Jo Walton's Among Others might guess, Walton is both an inveterate reader of SF and fantasy, and a chronic re-reader of books. In 2008, then-new science-fiction mega-site Tor.com asked Walton to blog regularly about her re-reading--about all kinds of older fantasy and SF, ranging from acknowledged classics, to guilty pleasures, to forgotten oddities and gems. These posts have con
On Reading, Writing and Living with Books
Wilkie Collins, George Eliot, Leigh Hunt, E.M. Forster · 96 pages
Browsings: A Year of Reading, Collecting and Living with Books
Michael Dirda · 246 pages
Michael Dirda has been hailed as "the best-read person in America" (The Paris Review) and "the best book critic in America" (The New York Observer). In addition to the Pulitzer Prize he was awarded for his reviews in The Washington Post, he picked up an Edgar from the Mystery Writers of America for his most recent book, On Conan Doyle. Dirda's latest volume collects fifty of his witty and wide-
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.
Dear Fahrenheit 451: A Librarian's Love Letters and Break-Up Notes to the Books in Her Life
Annie Spence · 282 pages
If you love to read, and presumably you do since you've picked up this book, you know that some books affect you so profoundly they forever change the way you think about the world. Some books, on the other hand, disappoint you so much you want to throw them against the wall. Either way, it's clear that a book can be your new soul mate or the bad relationship you need to end. In Dear Fahrenheit 45
So Many Books
Gabriel Zaid · 144 pages
A thought-provoking guide to allocating reading time This brief guide argues that, in the future, books will be less precious than the time it takes to read them. It addresses how to tackle personal "must read" lists and pare them down to the books that will truly benefit their reader-- which ones to start this year, which to put on hold, and which to pull off the sagging shelves. This witty volum
Why I Read: The Serious Pleasure of Books
Wendy Lesser · 231 pages
"An exhilarating volume that will ratchet up the joy for all reading groups "Wendy Lesser's extraordinary alertness, intelligence, and curiosity have made her one of America's most significant cultural critics," writes Stephen Greenblatt. In Why I Read, Lesser draws on a lifetime of pleasure reading and decades of editing one of the most distinguished little magazines in the country, The Threepenn
Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them
Francine Prose · 296 pages
Long before there were creative-writing workshops and degrees, how did aspiring writers learn to write? By reading the work of their predecessors and contemporaries, says Francine Prose. In *Reading Like a Writer*, Prose invites you to sit by her side and take a guided tour of the tools and the tricks of the masters. She reads the work of the very best writers—[Dostoyevsky][1], [Flaubert][2], [