I am going to be bluntly honest in my short “review” of this book, but I was rather disappointed. Books about people who talk about books have fast become a favourite genre of mine, but this is the first book where I just thought “enough is enough”. Although maybe the problem I actually have with this book is with the author personally.
Books are mentioned half-heartily, more as a segue to talk, or rather complain, about lots of facets of her life: an interracial marriage, her husband working for Saturday Night Live, her husband not reading, her husband being angry, her child not reading, et cetera, et cetera.
I love the way she broke out of habits and read books relating to sports, or other subjects a bit out of most reader’s whims, but I otherwise didn’t relate to her tastes. Not that I can seriously find fault with an author not writing about things that I like, but rather that she did so in a way that failed to make it interesting for me. (And I can’t believe that someone who writes about books for a living would only get one chapter into “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle” before putting it down. Surely I am not alone in thinking that is work of genius, am I?!)
Regardless of my complaints, I still enjoyed reading this for the most part. It is still a book about books, and the idea is wonderful; deciding to read at least one book a week and write about it. I feel like the author decided to make this into too much of an angsty journal process though.
If your local library has it, consider reading it, but if you’d prefer to skip a few books ahead to “The World’s Strongest Librarian”, I wouldn’t blame you.
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