My Life with Bob: Flawed Heroine Keeps Book of Books, Plot Ensues

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

How To Be a Heroine

Samantha Ellis · 272 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.

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

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

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

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

The 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

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.

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

Tolstoy and the Purple Chair: My Year of Magical Reading

Nina Sankovitch · 240 pages

Catalyzed by the loss of her sister, a mother of four spends one year savoring a great book every day, from Thomas Pynchon to Nora Ephron and beyond. Nina Sankovitch's soul-baring and literary-minded memoir is a chronicle of loss, hope, and redemption. Nina ultimately turns to reading as therapy and through her journey illuminates the power of books to help us reclaim our lives.

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

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.

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.

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

My Life in Middlemarch

Rebecca Mead · 293 pages

"A New Yorker writer revisits the seminal book of her youth--Middlemarch-- and fashions a singular, involving story of how a passionate attachment to a great work of literature can shape our lives and help us to read our own histories."--From publisher description. "Rebecca Mead was a young woman in an English coastal town when she first read George Eliot's Middlemarch, regarded by many as the gr

84, Charing Cross Road

Helene Hanff · 108 pages

It all began with a letter inquiring about second-hand books, written by Helene Hanff in New York, and posted to a bookshop at 84, Charing Cross Road in London. As Helene's sarcastic and witty letters are responded to by the stodgy and proper bookshop employee Frank Doel, a relationship blossoms into a warm and charming long-distance friendship lasting many years.

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

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 Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible

A.J. Jacobs · 492 pages

Raised in a secular family but interested in the relevance of faith in our modern world, A.J. Jacobs decides to attempt to obey the Bible as literally as possible for one full year. He vows to follow the Ten Commandments. To be fruitful and multiply. To love his neighbor. But also to obey the hundreds of less publicized rules: to avoid wearing clothes made of mixed fibers; to stone adulterers. The

Avid Reader: A Life

Robert Gottlieb · 337 pages

"The editor-in-chief of Simon & Schuster writes with wit and candor about becoming the editor of The New Yorker, and the challenges and satisfactions of running America's preeminent magazine,"--NoveList.

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 Reading Promise: My Father and the Books We Shared

Alice Ozma, Jim Brozina · 299 pages

The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop: A Memoir, a History

Lewis Buzbee · 216 pages

In The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop, Buzbee, a former bookseller and sales representative, celebrates the unique experience of the bookstore--the smell and touch of books, getting lost in the deep canyons of shelves, and the silent community of readers. He shares his passion for books, which began with ordering through The Weekly Reader in grade school. Interwoven throughout is an historical account of