What’s in it
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorShakespeare Wrote for Money
Nick Hornby · 131 pages
With an affectionate introduction by Sarah Vowell, this is the third and final collection of columns by celebrated novelist Nick Hornby from "The Believer" magazine. Hornby's monthly reading diary discusses cultural artifacts the way they actually exist in people's lives, and his notes on books--highbrow and otherwise--are accessible and hilarious.
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
Books v. Cigarettes
George Orwell · 144 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.
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.
Bookless in Baghdad and Other Writings on Reading
Shashi Tharoor
A Truth Universally Acknowledged: 33 Great Writers on Why We Read Jane Austen
Susannah Carson · 320 pages
For so many of us a Jane Austen novel is much more than the epitome of a great read. It is a delight and a solace, a challenge and a reward, and perhaps even an obsession. For two centuries Austen has enthralled readers. Few other authors can claim as many fans or as much devotion. So why are we so fascinated with her novels? What is it about her prose the has made Jane Austen so universally belov
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?
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
Imagined London: A Tour of the World's Greatest Fictional City
Anna Quindlen · 169 pages
Anna Quindlen first visited London from a chair in her suburban Philadelphia home--in one of her beloved childhood mystery novels. She has been back to London countless times since, through the pages of books and in person, and now, in Imagined London, she takes her own readers on a tour of this greatest of literary cities.While New York, Paris, and Dublin are also vividly portrayed in fiction, it
The View from the Cheap Seats: Selected Nonfiction
Neil Gaiman · 546 pages
"An enthralling collection of nonfiction essays on a myriad of topics--from art and artists to dreams, myths, and memories--observed in #1 New York Times bestselling author Neil Gaiman's probing, amusing, and distinctive style. An inquisitive observer, thoughtful commentator, and assiduous craftsman, Neil Gaiman has long been celebrated for the sharp intellect and startling imagination that inform
On Reading, Writing and Living with Books
Wilkie Collins, George Eliot, Leigh Hunt, E.M. Forster · 96 pages
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
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
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 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.
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
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
The Shelf: From LEQ to LES: Adventures in Extreme Reading
Phyllis Rose · 271 pages
"Phyllis Rose embarks on a grand literary experiment--to read her way through a random shelf of library books, LEQ-LES. Can you have an Extreme Adventure in a library? Phyllis Rose casts herself into the wilds of an Upper East Side lending library in an effort to do just that. Hoping to explore the "real ground of literature," she reads her way through a somewhat randomly chosen shelf of fiction,
This is Not the End of the Book
Umberto Eco, Jean-Claude Carriere · 348 pages
This beautifully produced book, an object of desire in itself, is the transcription of a long conversation between the two men in which they discuss a vast range of subjects, from what can be defined as the first book, to the idea of the library, the burning of books both accidental and deliberate, and what will happen to knowledge and memory when infinite amounts of information are available at t
Judging a Book by Its Lover: A Field Guide to the Hearts and Minds of Readers Everywhere
Lauren Leto · 269 pages
"Want to impress the hot stranger at the bar who asks for your take on Infinite Jest? Dying to shut up the blowhard in front of you who's pontificating on Cormac McCarthy's "recurring road narratives"? Having difficulty keeping Francine Prose and Annie Proulx straight? For all those overwhelmed readers who need to get a firm grip on the relentless onslaught of must-read books to stay on top of the