No surprise here: Anne Bogel tells us that the most common question she gets is, “Can you recommend a great book?” The question comes because, she says, “Because I’m a writer, certified book nerd, and all-around bookish enthusiast, people ask me the question all the time.” Her book reminds us that there are “few one-size-fits-all prescriptions for reading life.”
The book offers 21 chapters. I was surprised at how interesting the one on “How to Organize Your Bookshelves” was. Her chapters on “The Readers I Have Been” and “Coming of Age” offer interesting insight into how we change because of what we read, and the one on “Again for the First Time” discusses why a good book, when we return to re-read it, will always have something new to say. It’s not the same book, and we’re not the same reader.
“A good book, when we return to it, will always have something new to say. It's not the same book, and we're not the same reader.”
I suspect that when I re-read this book, I will find it different and that it will have a new, updated message for me, so I plan to do just that.
Quotes
“When we share our favorite titles, we can't help but share ourselves as well. Shakespeare said the eyes are the windows to the soul, but we readers know one's bookshelves reveal just as much.”
“Yet she wondered if her experience was cheapened because she’d read it before she lived it,”
“A “great” book means different things to different people.”
“C. S. Lewis once wrote, “Friendship . . . is born at the moment when one man says to another, ‘What! You too? I thought I was the only one.”
